from Medieval to Modernity

Transcription

Journal of
Irish
and Scottish
Studies
Volume 1: Issue 1
Cultural Exchange:
from Medieval to Modernity
AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies
JOURNAL OF IRISH AND SCOTTISH STUDIES
Volume 1, Issue 1
Cultural Exchange: Medieval to Modern
Published by the
AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the
University of Aberdeen
in association with
The universities of the
The Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative
and
The Stout Research Centre Irish-Scottish Studies Programme
Victoria University of Wellington
ISSN 1753-2396
Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies
Issue Editor: Cairns Craig
Associate Editors: Stephen Dornan, Michael Gardiner, Rosalyn Trigger
Editorial Advisory Board:
Fran Brearton, Queen’s University, Belfast
Eleanor Bell, University of Strathclyde
Michael Brown, University of Aberdeen
Ewen Cameron, University of Edinburgh
Sean Connolly, Queen’s University, Belfast
Patrick Crotty, University of Aberdeen
David Dickson, Trinity College, Dublin
T. M. Devine, University of Edinburgh
David Dumville, University of Aberdeen
Aaron Kelly, University of Edinburgh
Edna Longley, Queen’s University, Belfast
Peter Mackay, Queen’s University, Belfast
Shane Alcobia-Murphy, University of Aberdeen
Brad Patterson, Victoria University of Wellington
Ian Campbell Ross, Trinity College, Dublin
The Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies is a peer reviewed journal, published
twice yearly in September and March, by the AHRC Centre for Irish and
Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen. An electronic reviews section
is available on the AHRC Centre’s website: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/riiss/ahrccentre.shtml
Editorial correspondence, including manuscripts for submission, should be
addressed to The Editors, Journal of Irish and Scottish Studies, AHRC Centre for
Irish and Scottish Studies, Humanity Manse, 19 College Bounds, University
of Aberdeen, AB24 3UG or emailed to [email protected] Subscriptions and
business correspondence should be address to The Administrator.
Cover image, Callum Colvin, ‘Blind Ossian’, from ‘Ossian: Fragments of
Ancient Poetry’ (2002). The face of the poet is based on an etching by Alexander
Runciman (1736-85).
CONTENTS
Editorial
v
What’s the Matter?: Medieval Literary Theory and the Irish Campaigns
in The Bruce
R. D. S. Jack
11
Voices of the Vanquished: Echoes of Language Loss in Gaelic Poetry
from Kinsale to the Great Famine
Tom Dunne
25
Irish Political Verse and the American Revolutionary War
Vincent Morley
45
The Oral Tradition and Literature in Ireland and Scotland:
Popular Culture in Robert Burns and Charles Maturin
Jim Kelly
61
Setting His Own Standard: James Orr’s Employment
of a Traditional Stanza Form
Carol Baraniuk
73
Dugald Stewart and the Problem of Teaching Politics in the 1790s
Michael Brown
87
Dissolving the Dream of Empire: Fratriotism,
Boswell, Byron and Moore
Murray Pittock
127
Radical Satire, Politics and Genre: The Case of Thomas Moore
Jane Moore
145
Away with the Faeries (or, It’s Grimm up North): Yeats and Scotland
Willy Maley
161
Reshaping Scotland: Ireland, Europe and the Interwar Scottish
Literary Renaissance Movement
Margery Palmer McCulloch
179
“Crossing Swords with W. B. Yeats”: Twentieth Century Scottish
Nationalist Encounters With Ireland
Bob Purdie
191
The Abbey: National Theatre or Little Theatre?
Nicholas Grene
211
Playing National: The Scottish Experiment
Donald Smith
221
Relations and Comparisons between Irish and Scottish Poetry: 1890
to the Present Day
Edna Longley
231
Kelman * Deleuze * Beckett
Michael Gardiner
241
Stateless Nation / Nationless State: History, Anomaly and Devolution
in Scottish and Northern Irish Writing
Aaron Kelly
253
The Revival of the Ulster-Scots Cultural Identity
at the Beginning of the 21st Century
Linda M. Hagan
271
Identifying Another Other
Cairns Craig
283
E DITORIAL
Irish-Scottish Studies as an area of modern academic concern began in the
1970s and 1980s in a series of symposia supported by the Social Science
Research Council and focused on the economic histories of Ireland and
Scotland. In the proceedings of the first of these – Comparative Aspects of Scottish
and Irish Economic History 1600–1900 (1977) – the editors T. C. Smout and
L. M Cullen say that ‘the idea for a seminar to compare aspects of Scottish and
Irish economic and social development 1600–1900 occurred to the editors at a
meeting at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1973’, and it is worth quoting at length
the issues that inspired their initial discussions:
Both countries within the period have exchanged populations in the
Scottish movement to Ulster in the seventeenth century and the equally
significant movement of Irishmen to Scotland in the nineteenth. In
both countries the cattle trade was a leading commercial sector in the
seventeenth century and the linen trade was the main manufacture
of the eighteenth; both countires attempted a cotton industry, which
was much more successful in Scotland in the nineteenth century; both
countries are famous for whisky (or for whiskey); both countries had
important growth in their foreign trade before the American War of
Independence, but Scotland was granted direct access to the colonies
and Ireland denied it; both countries were affected by the improving
landlords of the eighteenth century and the Higlands like Ireland were
obsessed by the movement for tenants’ rights in the nineteenth. In both
countries economic development was threatened by recurrent imbalances between food supply and population growth; most of Scotland
escaped the trap but Ireland, in 1846, failed to do so.
The driving force behind this agenda, as Rosalind Mitchison and Peter
Roebuck put it in their introduction to the published version of the third
symposium – Economy and Society in Scotland and Ireland 1500–1939 (1988)
– was ‘why did the Scottish and Irish economies diverge so markedly in the
vi
years after c.1780?’ The Irish-Scottish comparison represented, as it were, a
test bed for explaining ‘economic take-off ’ and the processes of modernisation.
The differences between them were subsequently to feed into the reconceptualisation of Scotland as the nation which, as in the notable subtitle to Arthur
Herman’s The Scottish Enlightenment (2001), ‘created our world and everything
in it’. As T. M. Devine – a regular participant in the symposia and editor
(with David Dickson) of the second collection of essays, Ireland and Scotland
1600–1850 (1983) – was to put it in The Scottish Nation (1999), Scotland,
rather than England, was the country in which ‘there truly was an Industrial
and Agricultural Revolution’ (107). Scotland’s leading role in ‘modernisation’,
together with the impact of Scottish Enlightenment thinkers on the understanding of the dynamics of historical change, gave a new significance to a
history that had often been presented as simply the after-echo of events in
England.
Ironically, perhaps, it was in the very years of these discussions of the differences between the historical experiences of Ireland and Scotland that Ireland’s
contemporary economy was preparing for its own spectacular economic takeoff, one that would give the ‘divergence’ in the performances of the Irish and
Scottish economies a very different contemporary significance. As the BBC’s
James Helms has commented, many in Europe ‘feel that Ireland is Europe’s
shining success story, a place transformed during its EU membership from one
of the continent’s poorest members to the top of the league’ and, therefore, a
model for all the other small countries which ‘enlargement’ has brought into
the European fold. Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union also gave its
political class a status in Europe to which Scottish politicians could not aspire
– except by going through Westminster. Where Ireland had once been offered
in Scotland as proof of the irrelevance of political independence to economic
development, Ireland now regularly outmanoeuvred Scotland in the attraction of the ‘inward investment’ on which Scottish economic development had
been premised. If Irish studies had been fuelled in part by the major achievements of its writers in the twentieth century, from Yeats and Joyce to Heaney
and Muldoon, and in part, too, since the 1960s, by the media visibility of the
Troubles in the North, they gained an international impetus in the 1990s that
Scottish Studies could not begin to emulate.
Those early meetings of economic historians took place around the time
of the failed Scottish devolution referendum of 1979, and the condition of
modern Scotland was then the cause of widespread despair. If Tom Nairn’s
influential The Break-up of Britain (1977) held out the prospect of Scottish
vii
political independence as a consequence of the collapse of the British state, it
did so on the basis of presenting Scotland itself as nation in terminal decline:
‘one can of course say that modern Scotland has its own unmistakable “identity”. Is it right to refuse “identity” to a hopeless neurotic, because he is different
from others, and unhappy about the fact?’ (173). But Scotland itself was to
undergo a transformation just as significant in its own way as the economic
transformation of Ireland – not a political revolution but a revolution in its
cultural self-perception, founded on the reinterpretation of the richness of its
cultural past as presented in studies such as Alexander Broadie’s The Tradition
of Scottish Philosophy (1990), Duncan Macmillan’s Scottish Art 1460–1990
(1990) and John Purser’s Scotland’s Music (1992). At the same time the creative
achievement of writers such as Alasdair Gray, James Kelman, Kathleen Jamie
and Janice Galloway, reached heights that for some suggested we were living
in a ‘second Scottish Renaissance’. If the new Scottish Parliament, voted for
in 1997 and opened in 1999, was indeed, in John Smith’s famous phrase, ‘the
settled will of the Scottish people’, that ‘will’ had been given purpose by what
had amounted, in the years since the first Thatcher government, to a declaration of cultural independence.
The movement towards devolution in Scotland made Irish-Scottish relations not merely a matter of significance to the nations’ past but of potential
future significance to both countries. Partnered in a European Union rather
than opposed to each other by their different histories in relation to Union
with England, sharing very similar economic challenges in civil societies no
longer dominated by religion, increasingly dominated by the so-called ‘knowledge’ economy, Ireland and Scotland had much to learn from each other – not
least in relation to the issues posed by the apparently unresolvable crisis in
Ulster. As the province edged towards peace in the 1990s, the issue of cultural
recognition – recognition of Scottish traditions in Ireland, recognition of Irish
traditions in the territory of the United Kingdom – became a crucial component in the building of bridges between communities divided by thirty years of
violence. London and Dublin might have taken the political lead in negotiating with the parties in Northern Ireland but what was being negotiated was
very centrally about Ireland and Scotland – as indicated by the status given to
Ulster Scots by the Good Friday agreement.
That these changes in the cultural and political environment had radically
extended the agenda for Irish-Scottish studies was clear from the first conference
of the Irish-Scottish Academic Initiative – involving initially the Universities
of Aberdeen and Strathclyde together with Trinity College Dublin – which was
viii
held in the University of Strathclyde in 1997. Under the title of Celebrating
Columba it sought to explore ‘Irish-Scottish Connections 597–1997’ and to
address ‘the full range of Irish-Scottish cultural, religious, political and literary
connections over the many centuries from his death to the present day’ (iii).
In this perspective the ‘divergences’ on which the earlier symposia had been
focused were reoriented towards the convergences of the longue durée, in which
‘historic affinities with both communities’ in Northern Ireland gave Scotland
a key role ‘not simply to strengthen north-south but also east-west links’ (vii).
The second ISAI conference, held at Trinity College Dublin in 2001, underscored the changing political landscape for Irish-Scottish studies: the keynote
speaker was Donald Dewar, Scotland’s first First Minister who noted that ‘one
of the by-products of recent developments in Scotland, and indeed the United
Kingdom as a whole, is a broader, more understanding concern and appreciation for the Irish connection’ (1). If the title of the conference in that year
– ‘Ireland and Scotland: Nation, Region, Identity’ – underlined continuing
differences in the political status of the two countries, the following conference
in Belfast in 2002 set a tripartite agenda in its title: ‘Ireland (Ulster) Scotland’
in which Ireland and Scotland were equal contributors to the ‘problematic
ground’ on which the conference itself was being held.
The impetus of Irish-Scottish studies – both in terms of its historical and
disciplinary reach and in terms of its contemporary significance – achieved
institutional status consolidation in both Ireland and Scotland in 1999. In
that year Trinity College in Dublin established its Centre for Scottish Studies
(now the Centre for Scottish and Comparative Studies), and the University
of Aberdeen established the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies
(promoted originally by George Watson and Allan Macinnes). Aberdeen had
a long history of being in the forefront of Scottish studies – the Association
for Scottish Literary Studies was founded there by Tom Crawford and David
Hewitt in the 1970s and George Watson’s chair in Irish Literature was the first
of its kind in the UK. The Research Institute was then fortunate in acquiring as its Director Professor Tom Devine from Strathclyde. Devine, as noted
above, had been involved in the original symposia on the economic histories of
Ireland and Scotland and had been a leading force in the establishment of ISAI,
so that he was well placed to secure for Aberdeen major AHRB funding for a
Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies. The success of the Centre’s many projects
was acknowledged in its rating of ‘outstanding’ at the completion of Phase 1
in 2006 and in its achievement of a second phase of AHRC funding. The new
institutional significance of Irish-Scottish studies was also marked by a joint
ix
project between the Universities of Strathclyde and Edinburgh funded by the
Leverhulme Trust (2001–2004), and by the establishment of the Irish-Scottish
Studies programme at the Stout Research Centre at the Victoria University of
Wellington in New Zealand (2003), as well as by new programmes in IrishScottish studies at universities such as Manchester, England.
These rapid academic developments in Irish and Scottish studies went
hand-in-hand with the political and social changes initiated by the Good
Friday agreement in 1998. The historical questions were no longer about why
the Scottish economy had diverged so significantly from the Irish c.1780 but
about how the two countries had between them contributed so significantly
to the transformation of European culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. The increasing attention given to the Scottish Enlightenment as a
key moment European intellectual history – a moment which owed much,
of course, to Ireland, both in the person of Francis Hutcheson, whose major
books were written in Dublin before he transferred to the University of
Glasgow, and in the work of George Berkeley, from which David Hume took
his philosophical starting point – was reinforced by the increasing recognition
of Ireland and Scotland’s key role in European romanticism, as explored, for
instance, in Katie Trumpener’s Bardic Nationalism (1997). And if many of the
developments in European culture in the nineteenth century could be traced
back to Macpherson’s Ossianic poems, or to the influence of Burns and Scott,
then, equally, Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake were the inspiration for much
of what happened in European intellectual life between 1922 and the end of
the century – Jacques Derrida, for instance, spent his time at Yale reading Joyce
rather than reading philosophy.
This ‘cultural turn’ in Irish-Scottish studies was underlined both in the
topic of ‘Cultural Exchange’ adopted for the fourth ISAI conference at the
University of Edinburgh in 2004 (from which many of the papers in this first
issue of the Irish-Scottish Studies Journal derive) and in the increasingly diversified range of disciplines – politics, sociology, theology, philosophy as well as
history, literature and language studies – involved in Irish-Scottish comparisons. The expanding disciplinary base for exploring relations between Ireland
and Scotland was matched, however, by the expanding geographic reach of
Irish-Scottish studies. Only Norway exported as many of its people in the
nineteenth century as did Ireland and Scotland, and emigration continued to
be a major factor in the national experience of both countries until the late
years of the twentieth century. Both Ireland and Scotland are countries whose
‘national identity’ has enormous numbers of participants who are not citizens
x
of their states: the significance of this diasporic identification – increasingly
evident as ‘identity’ politics becomes the currency of political development
around the world – has added a further dimension to the comparative study
of two nations whose diaspora have often lived cheek by jowl with each other
around the world. In California, for instance, the American nobel-prize winning novelist John Steinbeck, whose mother’s family was from Bally Kelly in
Northern Ireland, grew up close to an area which had been named ‘Bonny
Doon’ by its Scottish settlers, and Steinbeck was to quote Robert Burns in the
title of his most famous story – Of Mice and Men (1937) – as well as adapting
the title of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in his account of the
America at the beginning of the 1960s, which he called Travels with Charley in
Search of America (1962). The exploration of the experiences of these diasporic
communities, of their continuing influence on each other and on the cultures
to which they migrated – and also of their continuing influence on the places
they left – has extended the scope of Irish-Scottish studies far beyond the territories of the modern nations.
Instead of being test cases for how ‘modernity’ began, Ireland and Scotland
are now, perhaps, test cases for how small, apparently marginal countries can
have a profound impact on world development, and for how, in the contemporary world, small nations, with very substantial diasporas that continue to
identify themselves with their homelands, should manage the processes of
European political integration and economic globalization. These are issues
which future issues of this Journal will aim to address.
On the appearance of this first issue, I would like to thank, for their financial
support, both the Leverhulme Trust, which in part funded the ISAI conference
in Edinburgh in 2004, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, whose
Phase 2 funding of the Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of
Aberdeen has made possible the publications programme of which the Journal
is one outcome. My thanks, also, to the College of Arts and Social Sciences at
the University of Aberdeen for its sustained and ongoing commitment to IrishScottish Studies. At a more personal level, I would like to thank Aaron Kelly,
now of the University of Edinburgh, and Eleanor Bell, now of the University
of Strathclyde, for their organisational work for the Edinburgh-Strathclyde
Leverhulme project, and Jon Cameron of the AHRC Centre in Aberdeen for
his assistance in the production of this issue.
Cairns Craig
Aberdeen, August 2007
What’s the ‘Matter’?: Medieval Literary Theory
and the Irish Campaigns in The Bruce
R. D. S. Jack
As Arestotill, giff as men redis
He had folowyt his kindly dedis,
He had bene fals and covetous,
But his wyt maid him virtuous
(Bruce, IV, 740 – 3)
I ‘Strange Lines’
John Barbour’s Bruce, composed in the mid 1370s, is the first long poem in the
Scots vernacular. It contains twenty books, the first thirteen of which trace the
Wars of Liberty from their origins until triumph at the Battle of Bannockburn.
At this point the Irish ‘matter’ enters the poem. Chronologically, this is understandable. After all, when Bruce won control of Scotland, the ‘opening up
of a second front in 1315 could have come as little surprise to Edward II’.1
Most modern readers, however, find Barbour’s treatment of that campaign an
unwise artistic choice.
When one analyses the Irish material in more detail these worries are
confirmed. Barbour does not just give a parenthetic nod in the direction of
chronology and chronicles. The entirety of Book XIV (554 lines) is devoted
to Edward’s embarkation in Ireland and the early battles in his campaign. The
first 265 lines of Book XV continue the description. A resounding victory over
the Anglo-Irish army suggests success for his endeavour. But while the opening
to Book XVI (334 lines) continues the victorious tale and brings King Robert
I to the island, doubts begin to dominate. Divisions between the two brothers
and flaws in Edward’s character anticipate failure. This possibility is realised
in Book XVIII. In the first 242 lines of that book an adventure which began
with victory over the Anglo-Irish forces ends with defeat at the same hands.
Edward Bruce dies, his failure gives new hope to Edward II of England (XVIII,
229 – 31) and the Irish ‘matter’ ends.2
Michael Lynch, Scotland: A New History (London, 1991), 125.
References and quotations follow Barbour’s Bruce, ed. Matthew McDiarmid and James
1
2
12
R. D. S. Jack
The topical and structural implications raised here are serious. Topically,
Barbour’s critics wonder why, in a poem about liberty, the clear lesson taught
by Bruce’s victory over English power is blurred by extended analysis of a
failed Scottish attempt to deprive another land of its freedom. Structurally,
they believe the first Scottish ‘makar’ or ‘word builder’ is creating a poor edifice. Either it should end with Bannockburn and eliminate the Irish material
or that material should itself be re-organised. Why, for example, does Barbour
move backwards and forwards from Ireland to Scotland, from Edward Bruce
to (predominantly) Sir James Douglas in a poem about Bruce? (See Books XV,
319 – 574; XVI, 335 – 510; XVIII, 259 – 436.) Can he not decide on his hero
or his topic?
Factual criticisms follow. As Barbour’s editors highlight,3 he promises historical ‘suthfastnes’ in Book I (1 – 20) yet his account includes four different
kinds of ‘lie’.
(1) Events: He simplifies events, for example merging Edward Bruce’s two
campaigns into one (XIV, 1 > XV, 265).
(2) Characters: He simplifies characterisation. Stereotypes dominate with all
candidates for heroism (and particularly Edward Bruce) being measured
against criteria of courage and wisdom. The historical cast list is also
reduced. For example, Richard Clare’s dominant role as English leader
is achieved by granting him positions he did not hold and placing him
in battles he never attended (e.g. XIV, 254 – 7: as Lieutenant of Ireland;
XIV, 389 – 91 as Earl of Ulster).
(3) Anecdotes: He adds unauthorised anecdotal evidence. One example is
when Bruce halts his entire army until a pregnant washer-woman has
been safely delivered (XVI, 275 – 96).
(4) Structures: The linear calendar of chronicles sometimes gives way to
other patternings of history. Mythically, in Book XIV, 312 – 16 Edward
Bruce is compared with Judas Maccabeus. In terms of Christian history
the dates and events surrounding the siege of Carrickfergus (Book XV,
98 – 108; 243 – 53) are manipulated to place them within Easter week.
Mysteriously, numerological patterns, mostly associated with the fortunate number three, are introduced (e.g. XVI,1 – 4; 49 – 52).4
Stevenson, Scottish Text Society, 3 vols. (Edinburgh and London, 1978 – 81). I have
normalised ‘y’ to ‘th’; ‘w’ to ‘v’.
3
A.A. M. Duncan’s edition, John Barbour: The Bruce (Edinburgh, 1997) has excellent
historical notes.
4
The direct ontological signing power of numbers was, in medieval times, based on Job
What’s the ‘Matter’?
13
At best, such critics damn Barbour with faint praise. The origins of
Scottish literature are bound to be naïve, even when the author concerned
is a learned archdeacon and university graduate. This study proposes a different approach. Modern concerns about the poem derive from modern
critical expectations. How do these criticisms fare when approached from a
diachronic perspective?
To begin with, the different kinds of ‘lie’ noted only exist if one’s criterion
for accuracy is mimetic and naturalistic. That these ‘errors’ are all measured
against political evidence also reflects a predominantly realistic or materialistic
world vision. The structural issues, for their part, derive from supposed imbalances within the natural story line. But are these, realistic, mimetic, political
and naturalistic assumptions shared by Barbour? What was his training? How
did he define the ‘truth’ of his poem? For if he worked from different artistic
premises, we may still find his work synchronically dissatisfying but we cannot
dismiss him as a naïve artist.
The biographical evidence concerning Barbour is at best patchy but one
fact provides a secure basis for examination. As McDiarmid has convincingly
argued, he was a learned man with a Scottish degree followed by study in
Paris, then the centre of European Aristoteleanism.5 This effectively removes
the assumption of early critical naivety. As Christian and Aristotelian, Barbour
lived at the time of Chaucer’s ‘newe science’ (Parlement of Foules, 24 – 5)
when Greek theory met Scholastic refinement. As Minnis has demonstrated,
this period saw the full flourishing of the twelfth century renaissance in literary theory: ‘From the thirteenth century until the end of the Middle Ages,
Aristotle was the Philosopher.’ He concludes that ‘no other branch of poetic
theory would have so long and prestigious a history in Western Europe’.6
Using only the most basic motifs within that tradition – the causal line and
the categories of allegory – I shall re-consider the critical problems outlined
above. 7
38.4 – 7 and the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon 11.17 – 20. See John MacQueen,
Numerology (Edinburgh, 1985), 1 – 46 [14].
5
McDiarmid I, 4 – 5.
6
Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism, ed. A. J. Minnis and A. B. Scott (Oxford, 1988), 1 – 11
[9]. In this Introduction as in his Medieval Theory of Authorship (London, 1984) Minnis
convincingly refutes the idea that medieval literary theory was at once peripheral,
naive and conducted on rigorous theological premises.
7
A summing up of these premises, and of the ‘causal line’ is provided by Timothy A.
Robinson in Aristotle in Outline (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1995). For accounts
of the causal line and allegoresis in the commentating tradition see Medieval Literary
Criticism 12 – 64 and 321 – 4, 396 – 8 respectively.
14
R. D. S. Jack
What, then are the basic tenets of this ‘new science’? Dante (1265 – 1321)
arguably the greatest Scholastic poet provides a valuable guideline. For him
the problems we have encountered at the literal level of interpretation are
not the end of the matter. Instead he asks his readers to see such ‘versi
strani’ (strange lines) as signs that fiction has translated truth in different
terms, accessible only to those who seek them out (Inferno IX, 61 – 3). With
this in mind, I shall reconsider the factual, topical and structural problems
encountered in both the Irish matter of the Bruce and, where apposite,
the poem as a whole. To do this, I shall concentrate on Aristotle’s position classically while employing Hugh of St Victor (c1096 – 1141) Geoffrey
of Vinsauf (fl 1198 – 1216) and Dante as touchstones for the Scholastic
approach.
II Medieval Poetics: ‘The Final Cause’
The first factual difficulty noted is, in Dr Johnson’s terms, Barbour’s sin
‘against the faith of chronicles.’ The Irish campaign as described in the Bruce
merges Edward Bruce’s first advance to Ardee in September 1315 with his
later, November campaign into Leinster, Kildare and Leix. The many historical inaccuracies which result dominate the notes of his editors . Nor is
the Irish section alone in offering apparent lies of this kind. Throughout the
poem, obvious perversions of fact are presented from the outset. In Book I,
Edward I is lengthily condemned for returning viciously from a crusade he
never went on (I:139 – 48) while Douglas’s father, against all evidence is transformed into a patriotic martyr figure. (I:282 – 5) Nor should it be forgotten
that these are knowing lies. The Bruce reveals that its author had read many of
the texts whose evidence he denies including Fordun, Guido de Columnis and
Gaulterus Anglicus.
The major assumption here is that Barbour’s prime aim is imitation of
the actual. But the most basic categories of Scholastic thought propose a different end. Aristotle, as Scholasticism’s prime source, proposed an essentially
causal account of knowledge which was applied in different ways across all
disciplines. When the final cause (causa finalis) in that line was applied to
Rhetoric and Poetics effective moral persuasion of a given audience emerged
as the aim rather than mimesis per se, ‘It is . . . the hearer that determines
the speech’s aim and object.’ (Rhetoric I.3.1358b1). The same view is mirrored by Dante when reflecting on his Divina Commedia. The poet, he
15
comments, aims ‘to remove those living in this life and bring them to a state
of happiness’.8
Therefore the pertinent question is no longer ‘Does the poem represent life
accurately?’ It becomes ‘Which audience was Barbour addressing?’ A reasonably clear answer is available. Records indicate that Barbour wrote under the
patronage of Robert II and was paid for writing the poem.9 That the Bruce
looks forward to a golden age under that King is consistent with this evidence
as is its warning that an alliance between king and nobles is needed to fulfil this ‘Stewart Myth.’ Interestingly, it is in Book XIII, after the account of
Bannockburn and immediately before the Irish campaign is described that
Barbour looks forward to the sixth year of Robert II’s reign and prophesies in
this way.
God graunt that thai that cummyn ar
Off his ofspring manteyme the land
And hald the folk weill to warand
And mayteyme rycht and leawte
Als wele as in his tyme did he. (XIII, 718 – 22)
Only if the weak figurehead nobles of Richard II’s time listen to the poem and
follow the example of their predecessors under Robert I will that golden age
emerge.
This hypothesis is clearly supported in Aristotelean and Scholastic thought.
For Aristotle the end of poetry as branch of Rhetoric is not only affective, it
is affective within the area of practical morality. Thus its aim is ‘to urge us
either to do or not to do something’ (Rhetoric I.3.1358b1). Dante agrees.
Poetry belongs to the ‘branch of philosophy (dealing with) morals or ethics . . . not for speculation but with a practical object’ (‘Can Grande’ §16).
To understand why this is so, the first cause in the line of analysis must be
introduced.
III Medieval Poetics: ‘The Efficient Cause’
Once the ‘end’ of medieval making is understood in persuasive terms, it is
easier to see why characters as well as events may be understood as factual lies
Dante, ‘Epistle to Can Grande’ §15 (Cited in Minnis, 462).
McDiarmid I, 7 – 11 [10].
8
9
16
R. D. S. Jack
which point to moral truths. To make this clearer, the first – authorial – cause
has to be drawn in. The poet/orator in Aristotelean terms is called the ‘efficient cause’ (causa efficiens) in two senses. The first highlights artificiality – he
is ‘effective’ within the disciplinary code of rhetorical persuasion; the second
signs the presence behind him of the Original Cause (God) outside of time
and text. The latter will be discussed more fully later. At this point it may be
noted that it explains the most frequently noted ‘lie’ of all, Bruce’s genealogical transformation into an unhistorical amalgam of grandfather (Competitor),
father (Earl of Carrick) and self (I: 37 – 478) mysteriously signs the Christian
God, three in one.
The more basic authorial issue of effectiveness demands further changes of
perspective from the modern reader. Poetry in that time was defined artificially
as a verbal signing system whose categories were assumed to differ from those
of the world and, therefore, make accurate, naturalistic imitation impossible.
(Aristotle, Rhetoric I.2.1357b1; Poetics I.1.1447a10). Even if it were obliquely
available to the ‘maker’ it was always viewed as an easier (and therefore inferior) option. Geoffrey of Vinsauf in his Poetria Nuova for example, calls the
line of nature ‘sterile’ and compares it unfavourably with the ‘fertile’ invented
endings of art. (97 – 102)10
It was also defined aurally and memorially as the opening to the Bruce
reminds us (I: 1 – 6; 13 – 16). These considerations make simplification of
events and characters not an aberration but the appropriate aim of a morally
persuasive art. As Hugh of St Victor had noted, ‘memoria’ is only effective
when ‘reducing to a brief and compendious outline things which have been
written or expressed at great length.’11 Another agreement between memorial
and poetic theory is relevant here and highlighted by Mary Carruthers. Both
simplify for the same, tropological end – ‘the formation of moral virtues.’12
Barbour’s simplification of the two Irish campaigns and his deployment of
Clare as a conveniently malevolent English anti-type to Scottish virtue would,
therefore, recommend themselves memorably and morally.
By defining himself as a writer of Romance (I: 446) rather than chronicle,
however, he assumes to himself another non-realistic freedom. While, like the
historian, he must pay attention to the particular and the actual, his specialised
Ernest Gallo, The Poetria Nuova and its Sources in Early Doctrine (The Hague, 1971), 21.
Quotations follow this text.
11
The Didascalicon of Hugh of St Victor, ed. and trans. Jerome Taylor (New York, 1961),
Book III, Chapter 3:11, 93. Quotations follow this text.
12
See Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory (Cambridge, 1990), 156 – 188 [156].
10
17
talent should be directed towards kinds and potentiality. The poet’s prime
function goes beyond what actually happened to embrace what might happen
(Poetics 9.1451a).13 That is, instead of concern with actuality, mimetic realism,
and politics as expressed in writing, the medieval writer highlights potentiality,
aurality, artifice, and practical morality. How does this affect our reading of
his ‘lies’?
Most obviously an affective piece of oratory designed to move the figurehead nobles of Robert II’s court to courageous action would account, in the
Irish section, for Douglas being set up as the major counter-type to Edward
Bruce. More broadly, it explains why a lengthy passage (I: 274 – 444) confirming that nobleman as a type of courage, loyalty and prudence and containing
the ‘lies’ about his father’s martyrdom precedes any detailed description of the
king himself. But if the poet wants to establish an easily memorable moral
icon of chivalric perfection against which lesser men may be measured, both
length and historic inaccuracy become justified. The poem, then, does have
two heroes as the opening suggests (I: 29). And at the end, it is Douglas who
completes his king’s desired crusade and Douglas’s death which leads into the
dénouement via another long and explicit statement of his knightly virtues.
Those who thought of poetry as a set of signs destined to instil good action
would have applauded the artist for pointing to higher truths rather than cavilling about factual errors.
The modern concern that Barbour fails to present real people and instead
measures his heroes and villains against the twin classical ideals of wisdom
(sapientia) and courage (fortitudo) (e.g. I, 22; 2, 263 etc.) would not have been
shared in the Middle Ages either. Aristotle, after all, had given poetry philosophical primacy over the historian precisely because ‘its statements are of the
nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars’ (Poetics 9, 1451b1).
As a result it imitates not ‘a given individual. but . . . a given type’ (Rhetoric
I.2.1356.b1). As a vehicle for presenting Ideas, the humourised character was
also more evidently a product of artifice and more easily assimilated in the
memory. Stereotypes were, therefore, highly regarded within the commentating tradition.
Nor are Barbour’s heroic types confined to Homer’s qualities of courage
and wisdom. He adds Virgil’s test of ‘pietas’ (moral goodness). Thus, while
Edward I may match Bruce in martial wisdom and bravery, his character
and motivations are overtly evil, with any historic evidence suggesting the
Quotations follow The Complete Works of Aristotle, 2 vols, ed. Jonathan Barnes
(Princeton, NJ., 1984).
13
18
R. D. S. Jack
contrary being omitted or re-written to keep that opposition persuasively
clear.14
Viewed in aural, artificial and affective terms, the Irish matter confirms
this simplified, moralised methodology. Historians stress the difficulty in
determining ‘the motives which lay behind the Irish expedition’.15 In Barbour’s
poem only one reason is presented for its ambitious initiation and ultimate
failure. Edward Bruce anticipates Shakespeare’s Hotspur in his pride and
immoderate ambition (XIV, 1 – 7; XVI, 325 – 34). The Shakespearean example
underlines the fact that we are here concerned with simplified mythic patterns
of history.
It is important to remember, at this point, that many medieval historians
also felt free on these grounds, to pattern and even invent facts so that the
higher aim of moral ‘suthfastnes’ be clearly transferred to their audience. As
Goldstein and others have demonstrated, when Barbour deserts the faith of
chronicles, he need not always claim the freedom of the poet to justify himself;
he need only define which side he has joined in the Historiographers’ War.16
And in that context, the apparent loss of focus, moving attention from
Edward Bruce to Douglas in three of the ‘Irish’ books can be seen in a more positive light. The opening account of Douglas’s youth established him as Hotspur’s
counter-type, the wise, courageous Henry Bolingbroke. If Shakespeare, in his
fictive presentation of the Tudor myth, contrasts Henry IV’s wisdom against
the intemperate rashness of Hotspur, so Barbour in his much earlier Stewart
myth concentrates on Edward Bruce’s lack of restraint in selfish pursuit of
honour. Chronicles are denied or manipulated to present his listeners with
two clearly contrasted alternative models for their own behaviour. To make
that choice even easier the underlying selfishness of Edward Bruce’s conduct is
explained in the same vicious terms – pride (XVIII, 83) reserved elsewhere in
the poem for Edward I and the devil.
Both Barbour and Shakespeare extend analysis beyond individuals to relationships and the ability to accept good counsel. The challenge of liberty is not
dependent on the king alone; it involves all levels of society with the nobility
having, once more, a key medial position in maintaining the hierarchical harmony. Rather than criticising Barbour for his lack of psychological nicety one
should perhaps praise him for patterning his extended oration in such a way
Edward’s genuine claims to the throne for example are played down while his
Christianity is called into question by his return from the invented crusade.
15
Lynch, Scotland: A New History, 125.
16
R. James Goldstein, The Matter of Scotland (Lincoln, Neb., 1993). Chapters 2, 3.
14
19
that these qualities are repetitively, and therefore effectively, recommended in
action.
IV Medieval Poetics: ‘The Material Cause’
This naturally draws in both the second stage of the causal line and introduces
the third kind of anecdotal ‘error’ factually. What is the causal ‘matter’ (causa
materialis) of the Bruce and how (if at all) does the Irish material contribute
to it? As it is in this context that the Irish section is singled out uniquely for
criticism this part of the argument is crucial.
The naturalistic, political argument which produces these problems can be
swiftly summed up: ‘The theme, as presented in Book 1 is a simple one which
may be encapsulated in the single line, “A fredome is a noble thing”. The 13
books which lead to Bannockburn not only illustrate that theme clearly and
triumphantly, they also suggest that, politically, the Bruce anticipates a democratic approach to government, fitting for a nation later to be defined in terms
of the democratic intellect. The Irish section, however, is at odds with this
model. Even if one sees it in Goldstein’s terms as ‘another war of liberation
urged by a Gaelic people united against English oppression’ (197) rather than a
dubious attempt to enforce Scottish power in a foreign land – the aim remains
less clearly libertarian. Tonally and structurally the Irish expeditions are also
unsatisfactory. The major hero, Bruce, loses and passes from defeat to death.
Douglas then carries his heart on crusade before himself dying. And although
a new order is promised by one of Edward Bruce’s wise counsellors – Randolph – the work ends on a whimper.’17
Again, a medieval Aristotelean would find these premises unconvincing.
As a philosopher, his views on liberty differ markedly from those advanced by
Barbour’s critics. For him, liberty was anything but a clear and absolute concept. Linking it with justice and defining it contingently, he concluded that no
system of social justice could offer freedom to all. The idea of democracy did
not appeal either; he preferred hierarchical systems, and opted for benevolent
leadership as the best, failed model available.18
Duncan, John Barbour: The Bruce regards the final holy section of Book XX as such a
‘perfunctory obit’ that he does not even print lines 607 – 30 of the poem.
18
This discussion of Liberty in the Bruce is presented at greater length in my earlier article
“(A!) Fredome is a noble thing!”, Scottish Studies Review, I (2000) 26 – 38, [29 – 31]. See
also Curtis N. Johns, Aristotle’s Theory of the State (Basingstoke, 1990).
17
20
R. D. S. Jack
As a poetic theorist, the stolidly political premise of the argument would
have troubled a man who had quidditatively allowed the poet freedom to
range persuasively across the entire allegorical range. For although he believed
that the end of poetic persuasion was limited to the practical and the ethical, mimesis remained the means to that final cause. And here, uniquely, the
poet could range across the entire sentential hierarchy. For Aristotle and the
Scholastics, the literal/historical level of application was part of this but only
as the foundation of a poetic building whose medial verbal courses concerned
moral practice and theory and which rose at its highest levels to religion and
anagogy. Constructing these allegorical levels of application remained the true
task for the ‘word builder’s artistry’.19
And where in this topical hierarchy did the political vision come? It stood
below the philosophical, the divine and the ontological. At these higher levels
alone absolute values might exist. Political themes were lower simply because
they were humane or ‘trivial’ in the terms of the Seven Liberal Arts. As Aristotle
himself noted, ‘It would be strange to think that the art of politics or practical
wisdom is the best knowledge since man is not the best thing in the world’
(Nichomachean Ethics VI.7.1141a1).
So what precisely is the libertarian theme which frames the Irish material?
Far from simply stating that liberty is a noble thing, Barbour admits that its
definition is humane and therefore contingent. Only those who have known
the contrary state of thraldom, can understand freedom, because politically
speaking, ‘contrar thingis ever-mar, Discoveringis off the tother ar.’ (I: 241– 2).
He is now on the verge of Boethius’ hydra theme as described in Book IV Pr. 6
of De Consolatione Philosophiae. The hydra’s body is human free will; its innumerable tentacles, the different questions human liberty raises in all disciplines
from politics to metaphysics. In medieval times, this problem was related to
the question of justice human and divine.20 It was also in this context, that the
feudal vow’s value as a microcosm for dialectical analysis was recognized. The
strengths and limitations of that bond could be variously examined across all
levels of application from the personal and the marital via politics and morality
to the Old and New Testaments.21
And that is precisely what Barbour does. In true Scholastic fashion, he
follows his contingent (unclear) Aristotelean premise by testing it against the
Hugh of St Victor outlines the architectural metaphor and discusses its implications
in Didascalicon, Books V and VI.
20
See Charles S. Singleton, Journey to Beatrice (Baltimore, 1958) 57 – 69.
21
See Beatrice’s speech in Dante’s Paradiso V, 16 – 84.
19
21
most difficult case possible. Kings and nobles may talk of liberty but what
of the lowest ranks? How can even the most just society guarantee liberty
to a serf when he is feudally bound to obey at once his wife and his lord,
whose demands may be instantaneously invoked yet be mutually exclusive?
The length of this exemplum – it covers thirty two lines (I, 243 – 74) – as well
as the openly admitted failure to solve it other than mysteriously (I, 243 – 74)
indicate its importance and confirm the broad allegorical context within which
liberty is introduced.
Nor should the sympathy shown to the thrall be taken as a sign that Barbour
advocates political democracy. While the first Book foresees Scotland’s success
in the wars of liberty and attributes it to all levels of society placing country
before self, the reason for that is not political but mysterious. God, ineffably,
has decided Scotland’s fate beyond time (I, 34 – 6; 131 – 4; 176 – 7; 606 – 9).
Barbour, therefore, is not a hypocrite as some critics suggest. He did own
serfs but he did not advocate a level society. Throughout the Romance ( IX,
64 – 72; also II, 170 – 4; 504 – 10; III, 755 – 62) and in the Irish section particularly (XIV, 101 – 3; 330 – 1 XVI, 1 – 14; 305 – 17), he consistently sides
with Aristotle’s favoured mode of government – hierarchy under a benevolent
leader.
The Christian God’s position as ‘original cause’ also explains many of the
anecdotal additions to the poem, including the example of Bruce and the
washer-woman. Its unauthorised presence is consistent with the medieval view
of history which accepted that its subject was at best a repository of illustrative
examples rather than a record of facts. It is necessary to show that Bruce possesses the defining New Testament virtue of mercy and so the washerwoman
enters the tale.
V Medieval Poetics: ‘The Formal Cause’
It is within these parameters of difference that the remaining formal issues have
to be considered. Do the broad criticisms raised at the outset concerning the
Irish matter’s structural ineffectiveness and topical irrelevance remain when the
‘causa formalis’ comes under scrutiny? Does the last link to be considered in
the causal chain remove those doubts about confused chronology outlined in
the fourth group of ‘lies’?
Certainly, the criteria used to define these problems have already been
discredited. The natural line of organisation is, for Aristotle and the commen-
22
R. D. S. Jack
tators only the foundation of the poetic structure. More difficult, more varied
and more artistic are the artificial orderings of ‘matter’ which reflect hidden,
allegorical truths. As Hugh puts it, ‘After the reading of history, it remains for
you to investigate the mysteries of allegories’ (Didascalicon, Book VI, Chapter
4). On these grounds different kinds of patterning reflect its polysemous
nature. They are not signs of confusion but of the verbal architect’s precision
because ‘History follows the order of time; to allegory belongs more the order
of knowledge’ (Didascalicon, Book VI, Chapter 6).
The fullest account of the various ‘ordines artificiales’ possible is found in
Vinsauf ’s Poetria Nuova. With it as authority, how might the linear and patterned courses of the Bruce have appeared to a fourteenth century audience?
The major artistic advantage of artificial construction is its freeing of the
story line from the single order of time. For example, the centre of the tale may
become the major focus. ‘The high point of the work does not radiate only
from the very end, but has a double glory: the end of the work and the middle, Art can draw a pleasant beginning out of either’ (Poetria Nuova, 118 – 20).
This bias might be signed by ‘amplificatio’. Within the artificial structuring of
the Bruce, therefore, Bannockburn has a major focus – as centre of the construction (Books X– XIII) – and this is signed by making it the longest single
episode.
The Irish episode’s valid structural and topical relationship to the story
of Liberty is further confirmed. Ireland enters that story as the first example
of liberty’s obverse side, thraldom, within the subtle Aristotelean argument,
‘As Walis was and als Ireland, That he put to swilk thrillage’ (I, 100 – 1).
The Scots learn from this negative example and oppose Edward I, winning a triumphant, series of victories which are absolutely guaranteed being
God-determined. The question of how liberty may be maintained, without
necessary divine aid, is considered after Bannockburn in the Robert II passage. It is in this context as an examination of the limits of ‘actual’ rather
than ‘absolute’ liberty that the Irish passage is needed to carry the libertarian
argument forward.
This contrast between divine and humane in a poem whose final cause is
an open-ended challenge to Robert II’s nobles determines the other ‘strange’
structural choices. The movement of focus from Ireland to Scotland, from
Edward Bruce to faithful followers like Douglas was seen to set an imperfect
knight against his perfect counterpart rather than reflecting authorial indecision. The ‘truth’ taught at the end underlines this contrast. Anagogically,
where harmony alone exists, Bruce and Douglas close heroic lives with holy
23
deaths. In the uncertain political world where divine protection is not guaranteed an open-ended story line reflects the uncertain future faced by Scotland’s
present rulers. These contrasted structures effectively offer the clearest possible challenge to these ‘auditouris’; in the disparity lies both ‘matter’ and
motivation.
Is there a means of checking this? As Hugh of St Victor argues, only
the highest, spiritual courses of the verbal building reconcile all others.
‘The deeper meaning admits no contradiction; it is always harmonious,
always true’ (Didascalicon, Book VI Chapter 11). Further, the good word
builder only lays down the bricks of the story line after he has decided upon
an appropriate form. The ‘causa formalis’ thus becomes a sign of the topic
chosen.
So what would that form be in the Bruce if the diachronic hypotheses
advanced so far have substance? Aristotle had no doubt that the unmoved
mover had circular form and ruled the spheres (De Caelo I – II; Physics VIII;
Metaphysics XII).22 Boethius popularised the idea and Vinsauf highlighted that
form within his list of artificial orderings, ‘The part which comes first in order
awaits outside the door of the work; but let the ending enter first, a fitting precursor, and let it pre-empt the seat, like a more worthy guest, or almost like the
host itself. Nature has placed the ending last, but the veneration of art defers
to and, lifting up the lowly, raises it on high’ (112 – 7).
When the hermeneutic issue is posed in this way, the structural ‘lies’
which opened this study become self-evident proofs. Mythically, a circular
ordering is suggested. By comparing the Scots to the Maccabeans Barbour
invokes the Christian parallel with Israel and a journey which led from Spain
via Ireland to Scotland. The latter half of the poem with its Irish passage in
which Edward Bruce is compared to Judas Maccabeus (XIV, 312 – 6) and
Douglas goes to Spain in the holy cause offers a historical pattern which
returns to its origins.
If this pattern is only suggested, the allegorical and anagogical circles are
much clearer. Numerologically, the 630 lines of Book 20 exactly mirror the
630 lines of Book 1. The final verse paragraph of Book 20 echoes the end of the
first verse paragraph in Book I and each celebrates that God outwith time who
knows the end of the narration before it began. (I, 129 – 35). Prophetically too,
Bruce’s victory is announced, alpha within omega, at the outset (II, 85 – 90).
Lindsay Judson’s article, ‘Heavenly Motion and the Unmoved Mover’ in Self-Motion:
From Aristotle to Newton, ed. by Mary Louise Gill and James G. Lennox (Princeton NJ.,
1994), 155 – 71 offers a good account of this area in Aristotle’s thought.
22
24
R. D. S. Jack
Even the ‘strange’ factual ‘lie’ of Edward I’s non-existent crusade is explained
when artificial circularity is contemplated. That invention allows a perfect
exemplary antithesis to be presented. At the start, the English king gives up a
holy war for materialistic reasons; at the end, Bruce defeats death to complete
his crusade.
Even the last group of factual lies associated with the Irish episodes are
explained by this account of structure. Christian history and, most significantly, the relationship of the Easter week to its penitential cause, the fall of Adam,
may defy chronicles. But when the auditouris hear that a truce was called ‘in
sic tyme as on Pasche day/Quhen God rais for to sauf mankin/Fra wem of
auld Adamys syne’ (248 – 50) they are reminded of those higher spiritual values and immutable ontological ‘facts’ which are part of the poem’s persuasive
end. Similarly the substitution of significant dates and numbers for actual ones
point beyond contingency and facts to divine ordering and the mysteries of the
Wisdom of Solomon – ‘Thou hast ordered all things by number and weight’.
Every one of the ‘strangenesses’ noted at the start of this study has now been
re-translated in alternative ‘truthful’ terms. This has been done while confining
diachronic evidence to the most widely held ideas and most influential writers within the medieval commentating tradition. In particular, the relevance
(in artistic, topical, structural and persuasive terms) of the most frequently
criticised section of all, ‘the matter of Ireland,’ has been demonstrated. It is,
therefore, perhaps time to stop blaming Barbour for doing badly things he
wasn’t attempting in the first place.
University of Edinburgh
Voices of the Vanquished: Echoes of Language Loss in
Gaelic Poetry from Kinsale to the Great Famine
Tom Dunne
The first part of my title acknowledges a debt to Wachtel’s great study of
Inca understanding of the Spanish conquest – The Vision of the Vanquished.1
His main sources were the folk dances that originated in that traumatic time;
difficult to interpret, but nearly all that survives from an Indian perspective. The manuscript sources for the Gaelic Irish response to conquest and
colonisation, particularly in its most crucial and rebarbative phases, from the
late sixteenth century to the Williamite settlement, are, by contrast, rich and
varied. Yet the largest and richest Gaelic source, the political poetry of the
Gaelic elite, has been ignored by nearly all modern historians of the period
(the most important exception being Nicholas Canny). Their historical contexts have also been largely neglected by literary scholars (again with some
exceptions, notably Breandán Ó Buachalla), who, when they have commented on them, have been content with scholarly editions, more linguistic
than historical.2 Even more remarkably, the most profound cultural revolution in Irish history since the coming of Christianity – the replacement of
the Gaelic language by English, initially as the language of power and elites,
but ultimately as the language also of ordinary life – this dramatic and traumatic shift scarcely features in modern Irish historiography. It is, of course,
a complex story, and even its main features are difficult to discern clearly.
It was a long drawn out process, with still unmapped local as well as class
variations, from the gradual abandonment of Irish by the indigenous elites
(and indeed the first generations of New English) and its divorce from power – to the far more rapid abandonment of the language by the rural poor
in the decades before and after the Famine: millions of individual decisions
responding to the harsh realities of economic survival, status and influence.
It was a process mediated through – and doubtless softened by – shifting patterns of bilingualism. It was made further invisible by the official policy of
Nathan Wachtel, The Vision of the Vanquished. The Spanish Conquest of Peru through Indian
Eyes (Brighton, 1977).
2
See, especially, Nicholas Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580 – 1650 (Oxford, 2001);
Breandán Ó Buachalla, Aisling Ghéar (Dublin, 1996).
1
26
Tom Dunne
what Patricia Palmer has described as ‘occluded translation’. The process she
describes continued into the modern period, that is, the official production
of monophone texts –e.g. of state trials, or evidence before parliamentary
commissions – which has everyone speaking English, even when the evidence
shows that Irish was spoken.3
This is one reason why Irish historians, who tend to rely so heavily
on official sources, have been largely deaf to the voices of Irish speakers.
Another is that most of them have difficulty with the use of literary sources,
and especially of Gaelic poetry, as historical evidence, despite the fact that
it articulated communal rather than individual perspectives. In the form of
Bardic court poetry, it was the main political discourse of the old Gaelic and
Gaelicised elites, and later, in Jacobite Aisling or vision poetry, it articulated
initially the hopes and aspirations of the dispossessed lords, and ultimately
those of the rural poor, to the extent that it became a core element of folk
culture. As Geoffrey Keating pointed out in his landmark history, Foras Feasa
ar Éirinn (equally neglected, though a more conventional source) it makes
no sense for historians to ignore the poetry, ‘do bhrí gurab i nduantaibh atá
cnáimh agus smior an tseanchusa’ [because in the poems are the bone and
marrow of the ancient record].4 While due account must be taken of issues
of genre and literary convention, the poetry discussed below gives insights
into Gaelic culture and its response to the traumas of colonisation available
nowhere else.
It is, above all, the neglect of such sources, and the over-reliance on the
official record, that makes possible the current remarkable and depressing
fashion among historians of early modern Ireland not only to ignore, but also
vehemently to deny, the colonial dimensions of Irish historical experience,
during that radically revolutionary period. Instead there have been various
attempts to normalise that experience, using ancien regime models, or
‘modernisation’ theories, and culminating in the now ubiquitous ‘new British
history’, launched by Pocock in 1975, which, at its crudest, reduces Ireland to
one among the various ‘regions’ of these islands as they were absorbed into the
centralising British state.5 Like the earlier models, this has produced important
Patricia Palmer, Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland: English Renaissance Literature
and Elizabethan Imperial Expansion (Cambridge, 2001), 54 – 7.
4
Geoffrey Keating, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn. The History of Ireland (4 Vols, London, 1902 – 14),
Vol. 1, 91.
5
For a good discussion of the Pocockian revolution, see the introduction to D. J. Baker
and W. Maley (eds), British Identities and English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge,
2002).
3
Voices of the Vanquished
27
new insights, but its approach, always artificial and myopic, has become as
crude and disabling an orthodoxy as the old-fashioned, polarised black and
white version of colonialism it posits as the alternative. Many of the most vocal
proponents of the New British History dismiss the relevance of any colonial
model to Ireland – and even more of the insights of postcolonial theory – as
if nothing had changed since the early crude formulations of Franz Fanon
and Albert Memmi. This ignores the fact that modern writing emphasises
above all the evolution of complex hybrid cultures from colonial encounters,
featuring assimilation and adaptation, rather than simple rejection and
alienation – something not that dissimilar from the better insights of the “New”
British History.6 My work has long been indebted to modern postcolonial
scholarship, particularly to Ashis Nandy on hybridisation,7 and to the insights
into the lost voices of the dispossessed or the illiterate rural poor developed
initially by Indian Marxist historians in their journal, Subaltern Studies.8 In
what follows, I will try to apply some of these insights to a range of Gaelic
texts, from the mid seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, which reflect
or respond to the slow-burning linguistic revolution I’ve described – the key
cultural aspect of that wider colonial revolution, which transformed virtually
every aspect of Ireland during this period. Rather than simply talk about ‘voices
of the vanquished’, in abstract terms, I want to allow some snatches, at least, of
what they had to say to be heard.9
Of course, in the official record Ireland was never described formally (though often it was informally) as a ‘colony’, the relationship to
England being masked by a series of convenient legal fictions – ‘Lordship’,
‘Kingdom’ – ultimately ‘United Kingdom’. Likewise the radical, violent process by which most of the indigenous elite were dispossessed, transported
internally or allowed into exile and their land given to foreigners, was done
ultimately in the form of due legal process and title, so that only the bowdlerised Gaelic place names in the new title deeds pointed to the earlier obliterated
reality. And so, for example, we can have modern histories of the Ulster and
Munster plantations that ignore Gaelic sources and deny that they were colonial schemes, but instead reduce them to established patterns of population
For an important overview of the transformation of post-colonial studies, see, Edward
Said, Culture and Imperialism (London, 1993).
7
Especially, Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: loss and recovery of self under Colonialism
(Delhi, 1983).
8
Ranajit Guha, et al, (eds), Subaltern Studies: Writings on South Asia History and Society (11
Vols, Delhi, 1982 – 2000).
9
My examples are mainly from Munster, and from texts that are in print.
6
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Tom Dunne
movement and an evolving market economy.10 The brutal reality is clear,
however, in literary texts, such as the colonialist writing of Spenser and other
New English settlers or officials, much studied by literary scholars.11 It is also
painfully clear in the Gaelic poetry, initially that produced by professional or
would-be professional poets for aristocratic patrons; later in the poetry produced by part-time poets for wealthy farmers and priests, and ultimately in
the folk poetry, or ‘amhráin na ndaoine’ of the Irish-speaking poor before the
Famine.12 Throughout, the dominant theme was that of dispossession – the
loss and hoped-for restoration of land – and also to the fore was the related
theme of religious persecution. The enemy, described often in extreme language throughout the period, was, interchangeably, the Englishman and the
Protestant. It may seem strange that the theme of language loss in the poetry
was a secondary and intermittent one, though I believe that the patterns of
assimilation and bilingualism referred to provide an answer. Nonetheless it
is a crucial thread running through this evolving corpus of poetry and song,
and it offers indispensable evidence of a key cultural aspect of a profound
colonial experience.
Finally, by way of introduction, I should define what I mean by ‘colonialism’, having been accused recently by Sean Connolly, of a ‘casual
characterisation’ in this regard.13 I am happy to use the definition that echoes
and re-echoes through the Gaelic texts, as in Keating’s account of ‘gabáltas
pagánach’ (Pagan conquest) – ‘léirscrios do thabhairt ar an bhfoirinn claoidhtear leis, agus foireann uaidh féin do chur d’áitiughadh / na críche ghabhas
le neart’(to bring destruction on the people who are subdued by him, and to
send new people from himself to inhabit the country which he has taken by
Michael McCarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation (Oxford, 1986); Philip Robinson,
The Plantation of Ulster (Dublin, 1984).
11
See, for example, Palmer, Language and Conquest; Andrew Hadfield, Spenser’s Irish
Experience (Oxford, 1997); Willy Maley, Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity
(New York, 1992); For a discussion of the debate sparked off by his foregrounding of
Spenser in The Elizabethan Reconquest of Ireland (1976), see Nicholas Canny, “Debate:
Spenser’s Irish Crisis: Humanism and Experience in the 1590’s”, in Past and Present,
No. 120 (1988), 201 – 9
12
Tom Dunne, “The Gaelic response to Conquest and Colonisation: the evidence of
the Poetry’, Studia Hibernia, No. 20 (1980), 7–30; ‘ “Tá Gaedhil bhocht cráidhte”;
memory, tradition and the politics of the poor in Gaelic poetry and song’, in
T. Dunne and L. M.Geary (eds), Rebellion and Remembrance in Modern Ireland (Dublin
2001).
13
Sean Connolly, “Tupac Amaru and Captain Right: a comparative perspective on
Eighteenth Century Ireland”, in D. Dickson and C. Ó Gráda, (eds), Refiguring Ireland:
essays in honour of L.M.Cullen (Dublin, 2003), 108.
10
29
force).14 Or, in the words of ‘An Síogaí Rómhánach’ some years later, around
1650, castigating James I, ‘d’órdaigh a dtalamh do thamhas le téadaibh / do
chuir Saxanaibh i leabaidh na nGaol nglan / is Transplantation ar chách le
chéile’ (who ordered their land to be measured, who put Englishmen in place
of the native Irish, and transplantation of everyone together’).15 The emphasis, time and again, in the poetry is on forced dispossession of the indigenous
elites and colonisation of their land by foreigners – a fairly obvious, basic definition – and one underlined by the reiterated hope or prophecy in the poetry
right down to the Famine, again to cite the ‘Síogaí Rómhánach’, template for
much that was to follow, ‘Goill d’ionnarbadh is Banba ’shaoradh’ (to drive
out the foreigners and free Ireland).16 Some of the cultural dimensions of that
core definition – and reiterated hope – will be explored in what follows. And
lest the vehemence and anger of much of what I will cite gives the impression that I am endorsing or resuscitating a polarised, black and white view of
colonialism, I want to make it clear that my argument, instead, is that side by
side with rejection of the culture of the new colonists and the colonial state
went cultural assimilation and ambivalence, and that the poetry also reflects
this.
As Patricia Palmer has shown convincingly in her important book on
Language and Conquest in Early Modern Ireland, there was a powerful linguistic dimension to the Elizabethan re-conquest of Ireland. ‘Anglicisation
was neither incidental to the conduct of conquest nor a mere spin off from
it. Language was intimately bound up with the ideologies that legitimised
colonisation and shaped its unfolding’.17 This was recognised in its immediate aftermath by Geoffrey Keating, who anathemised Stanihurst for his
support for the new official policy of replacing Irish by English. Using the
example of William the Conqueror, he contrasted this policy with the ideal
of a ‘gabháltas Críostúil’ or ‘Christian conquest’ which respected the indigenous language – ‘óir ní féidir an teanga do dhíbirt, gan an lucht d’ár teanga
í do dhíbirt’ (for it is not possible to banish the language without banishing the folk whose language it is).18 By ‘folk’ Keating meant the Gaelic and
Gaelicised elites, many of whom were, indeed, banished, while most of those
who stayed quickly assimilated, and Joep Leerssen has shown how later in
Keating, Foras Feasa,, 136–7.
Cecile O’Rahilly (ed), Five Seventeenth Century Political Poems (Dublin, 1977), poem 2,
lines 91– 4.
16
Ibid., line 312.
17
Palmer, Language and Conquest, 14.
18
Keating, Foras Feasa, 1, 36–7.
14
15
30
Tom Dunne
the seventeenth century, the blame for the decline of Irish was put by the
poets not on the English so much as on the Gaelic nobility. In the words
of the poet Diarmuid Mac Muireadhaigh, ‘Ní hí an teanga do chuaidh ó
chion acht an dream dár dhual a dídion’ (it is not the language which has
come into disesteem, but those who should defend it).19 Keating’s classic
text, Foras Feasa ar Éirinn (a basis of knowledge about Ireland) was itself a
proof and product of an abrasive colonialism, defining itself specifically as a
response to the misrepresentations of Gaelic history and culture by colonialist writers from Giraldus Cambrensis to Spenser. It was to be the bible of the
antiquarianism that formed an important part of the native elite’s response
to language loss, and underpinned an important strain of ‘patriot’ sentiment
in the eighteenth century. This has been shown in great detail in Leerssen’s
seminal work, Mere Irish and Fior-Ghael, and in Clare O’Halloran’s, Golden
Ages and Barbarous Nations.20 My concern is to seek for traces in the poetry
of how the new colonialism, particularly after Cromwell, was experienced
culturally.
This has to be seen, as the Gaelic literati saw it, against the background
of the earlier phase of colonisation from the neighbouring island since the
twelfth century – and going back further, indeed, to the series of earlier invasions, historical and mythological, around which Gaelic history and literature
were organised. A twelfth century compilation of texts detailing resistance to
the Vikings, while designed as dynastic propaganda, became emblematic of
the way that history, from the Normans onwards, came to be perceived as
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (the war between the native Irish and the foreigners).21 Yet, as Keating in particular was at pains to point out, the Normans
were absorbed culturally, and to a considerable degree politically, producing a hybrid society.22 But it was a two-way process. To quote Tuireamh na
hÉireann again, ‘Do bhí an Gaeul gallda ’s an Gall Gaeulach’ (the Irish took
on foreign ways and the foreigners Irish ways).23 Bardic poetry reflected that
cultural interpenetration, but even when written for Norman families, and
Joep Leerssen, Meere -Irish and Fíor -Ghael; studies in the idea of Irish nationality, its
development and literary expression prior to the nineteenth century (Amsterdam, 1986; Cork
1996. Quotations are from the Cork edition), 204 ff.
20
Clare O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous Nations: Antiquarian Debate and Cultural
Politics in Ireland, c.1750 – 1800 (Cork, 2004).
21
J.H.Todd (ed.), Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh;the War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill (Dublin,
1867).
22
See, in particular, Keating, Foras Feasa, 1, 35 – 41.
23
O’Rahilly, Five Seventeenth Century Poems, “Tuireamh na hÉireann”, l. 280
19
31
giving them Gaelic antecedents and connections, it never lost the sense of
the core distinction between Gael and Gall. This remained true of the poetry
that celebrated the alliance of the Gaelic Irish and Old English, as they now
became, against the New English. While praised as ‘seanGhaill séimhe’ (gentle old English, they were still, after 400 years, emphatically Gall/foreign.24
Thus, the reiterated use of this Gael/Gall division in the poetry under discussion here reflected a very old literary and political convention.
While significant, it should not be exaggerated, however. Many years ago,
I argued that the intense dislike of the new colonists by the poets should
be seen more in terms of class, culture and religion rather than ethnicity,
much less nationalism.25 This dislike came to focus strongly on their language, in ways that combined the traditional emphasis on the foreign with
a new emphasis on the non-aristocratic background of the newcomers. The
word ‘béarla’ had originally meant simply ‘language, speech, dialect’, to
quote Dineen, but from the mid-seventeenth century, as will be clear from
most of the texts I will cite, it came more and more to mean the language
of the newcomers, i.e. English. For Dáibhí Cúndún, they were ‘bodaig an
Bhéarla / Scum na Sagsan is na bailtibhba thréine’ (English speaking serfs,
the scum of the English and the principal towns) and ‘bastardaibh Béarla’
(English speaking bastards).26 They were low bred, artisans, ‘brosgán brocach
do bhodachaibh céirde’ (a filthy rabble of churls in trades) in Éamonn an
Dúna.27 Dáibhí Ó Bruadair, the Gaelic world’s most passionate and graphic
witness to the period between the Cromwellian settlement and the aftermath
of Aughrim, constantly emphasised their gross materialism, and in his 1652
poem, Créacht to dháil mé, he made their language part of this. After the
banishment of the native lords, he wrote,
Biaid féin ’na ndeághaidh go másach magaidh
d’éis a seárnta i mbláith a mbailte
go péatrach, plátach, prásach, pacach,
béarlach beárrtha bádhach blasta.
(His editor, MacErlean, translates this, rather loosely – ‘To take their
places then will come the fat-rumped jeerers, after crushing them,
Ibid., l..
Dunne, “The Gaelic response”, 23.
26
O’Rahilly, Five Seventeenth Poems, “Aiste Dháibhí Cúndún”, lines, 34 – 5, 207 – 09.
27
Ibid., “Éamonn an Dúna’, lines, 299 – 304.
24
25
32
Tom Dunne
their culture and their cities, laden with packs and plates and brass and
pewter, with shaven jaws and English talk and braggart accent’.)28
English – and English speakers – were often seen as ugly, animal-like (bears and
wolves, for example). Ó Bruadair described an English-speaking boor who
insulted a female relative of his patron, Lord Barrymore, as having ‘truidireacht Bhéarla pléasca is plubaireacht phluc’ (his stammering, jabbering English
exploding from blubbering jaws).29 And language was also associated with the
other key aspect of the new colonists’ cultural abrasiveness – their religion; in
the ‘Síogaí Rómhánach, for example, the enemy are ‘lucht Bhéarla / is Chailbhin
chleasaigh bhradaigh bhréagaigh (English speakers and Calvinists, dishonest,
thieving and false). In this poem the two are connected in concrete terms, with
resentment at the obligatory use of the vernacular in church, ‘a n-agallamh
glafarnach Bhéarla’ (their noisy English).30 But the main emphasis in the later
seventeenth century poetry is on the foreignness and low class origins of the
new colonists (‘coilínigh’, a term used by Keating), satirised by Ó Bruadair in
listing their strange plebian names,
Gúidí Húc is Múdar Hammer / Róibín Sál is Fádur Salm / Fear an
bhríste ag díol an tsalainn, / geamar Rút is Goodman Cabbage, / Mistress
Cápon, Cáit is Anna, / Ruiséal Rác is Máistir Geadfar.
(Judy Hook and Mother Hammer, Robin Saul and father Psalm, the
man in breeches salt a-selling, Gammer Ruth and Goodman Cabbage,
Mistress Capon, Kate and Anna, Russell Rake and Mister Gaffer!)31
This is a humorous example of a feature of this poetry – the use of loan words
from English – that most clearly, perhaps, reflects, even enacts, the linguistic
dimensions of an abrasive colonialism. Patricia Palmer writes of ‘the role of
the sword in advancing the policies of the word’, but in the Gaelic poetry you
find, instead, examples of the role of the word in advancing the policies of the
sword.32 The poem Éamonn an Dúna has the most memorable and sustained
J. C. McErlean (ed.), Duanaire Dháibhí Uí Bhruadair: the Poems of David Ó Bruadair (3
Vols, London, 1910 – 16), Vol. 1, No. 5, verse 23.
29
Ibid., No. 9, verse 6.
30
O’Rahilly, Five Seventeenth Century Poems, “An Síogaí Rómhánach”, lines 297 – 8, 70 – 6.
31
MacErlean, Ó Bruadair, Vol. 1, No. 5, verses 25 – 6.
32
Palmer, Language and Conquest, 122.
28
33
example, after a long litany of executions, banishments and injustices in the
Cromwellian period.
Transport, transplant, mo mheabhair ar Bhéarla (my understanding of
English)
Shoot him, kill him, strip him, tear him
A Tory, hack him, hang him, rebel
a rogue, a thief, a priest, a papist.33
English is thus the language of power, violence, abuse, and religious persecution, and such phrases recur in the poetry, for example in Diarmaid
Mac Sheáin Bhuidhe Mhic Chárthaig’s ‘Céad Buidhe re Dia’. Rejoicing that
the accession of James II has turned the tables on the Cromwellians, or as
he calls them in another common reference to cultural difference, ‘bodaigh
an cháise’ (cheese eating churls), he wrote, ‘D’éis transplant is gach feall dár
cheapadar / d’éis transport le seol tar fairge / . . . Go hiaith Jamaica’ (after all
the transplants and deceits that were planned by them / after all the transports
in sailing ships overseas / . . . to the land of Jamaica.) The conflict between
the Cromwellians and native Irish is dramatised in this poem in the stereotypes of colonists ‘Seón’ and ‘Ráif ’ and their Gaelic counterparts ‘Tadhg’
and ‘Diarmaid’. Indeed it refers directly to the use of the latter names by
petty officialdom as terms of abuse, remembering the ‘gach méara chéirde
ceachartha . . . gan focal san dlíghe, is nach scríobhfadh ainm duit / adúirt
Téigs is Diarmaids riamh go tarcuisneach’ (those base merchant mayors,
who knew not a word of law and could not write their names for you, but
called us Teagues and Dermots derisively.) He focused on the connection
of power to language, particularly on the challenges called out by sentries.
Now that the Catholic Irish have the upper hand – and the poem proclaims
divine approval on ‘gach aon is Éireannach dearbhtha / is tá gan cheist don
chreidiomh chatoilce’ (everyone known as a tried and proved Irishman,
and who is in faith without question a practising Catholic) – now Seón and
Ráif, ‘prinntísigh dhíoblaidhe na cathrach’ (diabolical city apprentices) can
no longer challenge with ‘Popish rogue’, but are themselves now greeted by
‘Cromwellian dog’ – as well as ‘Mise Tadhg’ (I am Teague).34
Ó Bruadair echoes this in the poem he wrote in answer to Mac Cárthaigh,
‘Cathréim Thaidhg’ (The Triumph of Tadhg), who turns the tables linguisti O’Rahilly, Five Seventeenth Century Poems, “Éamonn an Dúna”, lines, 129 – 33.
MacErlean, O Bruadair, Vol. 3, No. 14.
33
34
34
Tom Dunne
cally by challenging ‘Cia súd’ instead of ‘Who’s there’. And in another example
of the bilingualism operating even at the level of the common soldier,
adeir Niall Óg re Seoirse, ‘Seachain me / Advance your pike, léig Tadhg
fairíomsa. (Says young Niall to George – get out of my way, advance
your pike / let Tadhg in beside me.)
Listing further Gaelic Christian names – ordinary people, rather than the noble
roll calls of the traditional ‘Caithréim’ – he portrays them ‘i dtig na gárda (the
guardhouse) – ‘ag seacaireacht / i gcanmhain nach taigiuir le Sacsanaibh’ (chatting in a language that is not pleasant to English ears).35 These poems endorse
the characterisation of the conflict between ‘native and newcomer’ in ‘An
Síogaí Rómhánach’, as a clash of cultures and languages. Among the crimes of
Charles I was ‘leis do hiarradh Dia do thréigean / ’s gan labhairt i dteanga na
Gaeilge / ’s gan ‘na háit ag cach acht Béarla’ (that he required that we abandon
God, and not talk in Irish, but in its place only English.) But Eoghan Ruadth
Ó Néill, the hero of this poem, ‘do rug sé creach gan chead don Bhéarla’ (he
plundered without permission of English) – and the ludicrously inflated list
of his triumphs ends, ‘Eoghan Ruadh ar ghuillibh Gaodhal / dá chur suas are
uachtar an Bhéarla’ (Eoghan Ruadh on the shoulders of the Gael being elevated above the English-speaking nobles).36
The Gaelic poets were very conscious of the role played by law in the process of conquest and colonisation, and English (and Latin) legal terms appear
more prominently in the poetry from the mid-seventeenth century (earlier
occasional references in Bardic poetry, while reflecting the expansion of the
Tudor State apparatus, lacked the same sense of persecution). Some of the
most visible and interesting ways in which the state power impacted on the
literature in Irish were the satires on parliament, notably Pairlement Chloinne
Tomáis of the mid-seventeenth century, that is the parliament of the Gaelic
lower orders who were free to indulge their social pretensions with the collapse of the aristocratic ruling families.37 It is also evident in the mock legal
summons, or Barántas, a feature especially of comic Munster verse in the mideighteenth century.38 But references to law in the poetry produced in the bitter
years of the Cromwellian wars and plantation saw it as a prime instrument of
Ibid., No. 20.
O’Rahilly, Five Seventeenth Century Poems, “An Síogaí Rómhánach’, lines 102 – 4, 182 – 3.
37
N. J. A. Williams, Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (Dublin, 1981).
38
Pádraig Ó Fiannachta, An Barántas (Maynooth, 1978).
35
36
35
alien rule and persecution. Thus, in the widely copied and profoundly influential synoptic history ‘Tuireamh na hÉireann’ – which brought Keating’s schema
into the mainstream of popular culture – it was the Reformation ‘d’osgail an
geata chum peaca do dhéanamh’ (opened the gates of sin), but after religious
persecution came that of the law:
Is docht na dlithe do rinneadh dár ngéarghoin: / siosóin cúirte is
tearmaí daora, / Wardship livery is Cúirt Exchequer / Cíos coláisde in
nomine poenae: / greenwax, capias, writ, replevin / bannaí, fíneáil, díotáil
éigcirt, / provost, soffré, portré, méara, / sirriam, sionascáil, marascáil
chlaona. / Dlí beag eile do rinneadh ar Ghaeulaibh / surrender ar a gceart
do dhéanamh.
(They devised tough laws to persecute us / court sessions and severe law
terms / Wardship livery and courts of Exchequer. / College (i.e. Trinity
College) rent by sub poena / greenwax, capias, writ, replevin (legal terminology), bans, fines, false accusations / provost, sovereign, portreeve,
mayor / sheriff, seneschal, crooked marshals. / And another little law
made for the Irish – that they surrender their rights.’39
Particularly noteworthy in this list are the laws – some of them recent – through
which land transfer was facilitated – the surrender and regrant system, above
all, but also the Courts of Wards, established in 1622 and the provisions made
for Trinity College in the Munster and Ulster Planations. Similarly, Cecile
O Rahilly pointed out that the description in the poem Éamonn an Dúna of
the schoolteachers gathered up after the Cromwellian victory, ‘iad mar ghadaithibh ceangailte ar théadaibh / ’s ag dul ó phórt go pórt convey ortha’ (tied
together like thieves, going from port to port under convoy) is a translation of
the official order, that prisoners ‘bee sent with sufficient convoy from garrison
to garrison’.40 Colonial law was dangerous; it could cost you your land, your
freedom, even your life. Hence the obsession with it and the attempts also to
deflect it with humour. The fact that the courts operated only in English put
the Gaelic Irish in double jeopardy, and was a major incentive to learn the
language. This was captured best by Dáibhí Ó Bruadair in his ‘Caithréim an
dara Séamus’ (The Triumph of James II) – who gave Irishmen ‘éadai is airm
óirleachais’ (deadly weapons and uniforms) and so freed them ‘ar fhórleanaibh’
O’Rahilly, Five Seventeenth Century Poems , lines 312 – 22.
Ibid., 169.
39
40
36
Tom Dunne
(from tyranny). Under him the true clergy live in peace, and the Irish speaker
need no longer fear the courts:
atáid ar binnse Dálaigh, Rísigh / ’sdá n-áileadh aoi do Nóglacaibh / le
héisteacht agartha an té nach labhrann / béarla breaganta beoiltirim
(On the Bench now are seated the Dalys and Rices, and a sage of the
Nagles is urging them to listen to the plea of the man who can’t speak
the lip-dry and simpering English tongue.)41
In an earlier poem he satirises the pretensions of the upstart Irish, who,
though they have but a feeble command of the language, insist on speaking
‘gósta garbhbhéarla’ (a ghost of rough English).42 These themes, and the pressures and dilemmas of language change, especially in relation to the law, are
still a core concern of novelists from a Catholic background – Gerald Griffin,
John and Michael Banim, and William Carleton – from the 1820s to the
1840s.43
In considering Ó Bruadair’s fulminations against the role of English, it is
important to bear in mind that he also wrote and doubtless spoke the language, and could even boast of his ‘Béarla glic’ (dextrous English), although
also at times expressing insecurity about his ability ‘dochan an ghoillbhéarla
do labhairt go líofa’ (to speak the foreign tongue fluently).44 Virtually every
important poet after Ó Bruadair was also bilingual, though the reflex continued of apologising for an inability ‘to write correctly in the English language’, as
Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín wrote in the preface to his important synoptic history,
Brief Discourse in Vindication of the Antiquity of Ireland, published in 1717.45
The poets lived in a world that was ever more monolingual in terms of power
and status. Their craft was tied to a language that was rapidly marginalised, and
as the patronage they depended on contracted to nothing, their main concern
MacErlean, Ó Bruadair, Vol. 3, No. 14, v. 19.
Ibid., Vol. 1, No. 3, v. 1.
43
See Tom Dunne, “Murder as metaphor: Griffin’s portrayal of Ireland in the year of
Catholic Emancipation”, in O. MacDonagh and W. F. Mandle (eds), Ireland and IrishAustralia (London and Sydney, 1986); “The insecure voice: a Catholic novelist in
support of Emancipation’, in L. M. Cullen and L. Bergeron (eds), Culture et Pratiques
Politique en France et en Irlande, xvie-xviiie siècle (Paris, 1989).
44
MacErlean, Ó Bruadair, Vol 2, No.7, v. 3; Vol. 1, No. 10. See Vol. 2, No. 5, for his poem
in English, “To all my friends in Kerry”.
45
Vincent Morley, An Crann os Coill: Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín, c. 1680 – 1755 (Dublin, 1995),
39.
41
42
37
for much of the seventeenth century was, in the words of Mathgamhain Ó
hIfearnáin, ‘Ceist, cia do cheinneochadh dán?’ (who will now buy a poem?)46
As the case of Ó Bruadair illustrated so graphically, the poets were pushed
down the social scale, from a privileged elite to menial or marginal positions, as
farm labourers or itinerant teachers, in what he called, ‘An Longbhriseadh’, or
shipwreck of the Gaelic world.47 While there are many poems fulminating at
the failure of the remnants of the Gaelic and Old English aristocracy to protect
the literary heritage and the language, there were many others attacking the
pretensions of those among the lower orders who were upwardly mobile in the
more fluid society that followed the collapse of the highly aristocratic Gaelic
system.48 The colonial revolution may have destroyed the old elites, but it created opportunities for others, and one of the most interesting ways in which
Gaelic poetry reflected the anglicisation process was its focus on the use of
English by this socially ambitious group. They are also satirised mercilessly in a
remarkable prose work, Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis, which features a meeting
in the 1630s of rural landowners in Kerry, using a crude version of parliamentary procedure, and dedicated to promoting their economic interests. Their
leaders are those with ‘teanga mhaith Bhéarla’ (good English), as they imagined or those who could impress the assembly with a garbled version of it, like
Tomás, who negotiates with an itinerant pedlar in tobacco, a new luxury item
to which they are addicted. This dialogue is a remarkable early example in an
Irish language text of the comic Hiberno-English, which was already a staple
of the English stage.49
The sense of a connection between the poets’ loss of power and status and
the rise of English-speaking peasants can be seen in Brian Mac Giolla Phádraig’s
poem ‘Faisean Chlár Éibhir’, from the mid-seventeenth century:
Is cor do leag me cleas an phlás-tsaoilse: / mogh in gach teach ag fear
an smáilBhéarla / ’s gan scot a neach le fear den dáimh éigse / ach ‘hob
amach is beir leat do shár-Ghaelgsa’
– which Joep Leerssen translated as: ‘The situation that brought me down is
a trick of this deceitful world / with a churl in each house that is owned by a
Osborn Bergin, Irish Bardic Poetry (Dublin, 1970), No. 37. See also, Nos 28, 30 etc.
MacErlean, Ó Bruadair, Vol. 3, No. 25.
48
Dunne, “The Gaelic Response’, 24, 28 – 9.
49
Williams, Pairlement, especially lines 1240 – 63; J. O. Bartley, Teague, Shenkin and Sawney:
being a study of the earliest Irish, Walsh and Scottish characters in English Plays (Cork, 1954).
46
47
38
Tom Dunne
speaker of nasty English, and / no one paying any heed to a man of the poetic company / save for “Get out and take your precious Gaelic with you”.’50
For Ó Bruadair, whose distrust for the Cromwellians as ‘Bodaigh an Bhéarla’
(English-speaking churls) clearly had a class as well as cultural basis, those of
‘céadta áta dá rádh mar ghallaibh’ (hundreds proclaiming themselves English),
who are mouthing ‘garbhbhéarla’ (rough English), were mainly those ‘le mórtas maingléiseach’ (full of ostentatious pride). Such a ‘scoturra glic’ (cute Irish
yeoman), he wrote in another late poem, would say ‘nach doirche Dutch’ (that
Dutch was no more obscure), if he encountered ‘éigse chothrom’ (correctly
written Irish verse).51 This is also a complaint of Aodh Buí Mac Cruitín in a
1716 poem,
Má éirgheann bathlach go beachtaithe in éadach nua / is go bhféadfadh
hata do cheannach má daor a luach / is Béarla a labhairt is gairid go
ndéarfadh an fuad / dar faith má mhairim, beidh gairim Uí Néill dom
ua.
Tá an éigse balbh ós acu tá scéal gach slua, / ní fhéadaid camadh ’na
teangain chun Béarla a lua; / tá an méid seo mhaireas do mhaithibh na
nGael, monuar, / gan spéis in aiste nó in aithris na n-éacht do chuaigh.
(If a rustic rises all done up in new clothes, and can buy a hat, however,
expensive, and speak English, before long the thief will say, by faith, as I
live, my grandson will have the title or name of O Neill.
The poets are dumb as they have the news of all those who can’t twist
their tongues to speak English. Those that live of the Gaelic nobility, sadly, have no interest in a poem or an account of past heroic
deeds.)52
By then, as Vincent Morley has shown in relation to Mac Cruitín’s early
verse, and Éamonn Ó Ciardha has established across a remarkable range of
texts, Gaelic literature had, quite literally, gone underground.53 The poets
Leerssen, Mere Irish, 203.
MacErlean, Ó Bruadair, Vol. 1, No. 5, v. 7; No. 3, v. 1; Vol. 3, No. 30, v. 3.
52
Morley, An Crann os Coill , 27.
53
Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685 – 1766: a fatal attachment. (Dublin,
2000).
50
51
39
may have been ‘dumb’ in relation to the dominant English culture, but
they had become active propagandists, even recruiters in the Jacobite cause.
Ó Ciardha’s work has demonstrated once and for all, the importance and
potential of Gaelic literary texts as historical sources, as well as establishing that Jacobitism, up to now little regarded by Irish historians, was ‘the
main political culture on the island’ down to the late 1760s. In two recent
contributions I have tried to show that, while Jacobitism began as a conservative aristocratic ideology of ‘return, renewal and restoration’, to quote
Breandán Ó Buachalla, the ‘powerful millennial message of individual and
communal liberation’54 at its core was embraced by the rural poor in the
fifty years before the Famine, to articulate their grievances against landlords,
tithe proctors and the local agents of the imperial power – and that this is
evident particularly in the popular folk songs, or Amhráin na nDaoine.55
The bridge from aristocratic to popular was the coded, mystical and prophetic form of the ubiquitous Aisling or vision poetry, the dominant form
of political verse in Irish, from its aristocratic formalisation by Aogán Ó
Rathaille to the demotic of Raftery and his contemporaries. In the Aisling,
a ‘spéirbhean’ or spirit woman appears to the poet, explains that she represents Ireland and gives (usually) a message of hope that her Prince, the
Stuart Pretender, was on his way with an army to demolish the colonial
settlement and restore the old lords and the Catholic clergy and the learned
classes – later amended to the establishment of fair rents, or even the abolition of rents, and of tithes and the tyranny of petty officialdom. Clearly
it developed new and evolving elements of what has come to be called a
‘subaltern culture’, but my concern here is with the remarkable continuities it displays with the seventeenth-century political verse we have been
considering. In particular, the persecution it rails against is described not
only in colonial terms, but in terms of cultural and linguistic conflict, and
the golden future it prophecies is not only specifically a Gaelic but a deAnglicised one. And yet, in the early nineteenth century, the poets also have
to acknowledge that Anglicisation has progressed inexorably to the point
that the very existence of the Irish language itself is in doubt.
Perhaps the most remarkable continuity in the way conflict was described
in Ireland from the twelfth century to the Famine and beyond was the contin Breandán Ó Buachalla, “Irish Jacobite Poetry”, The Irish Review, No. 12 (1992), 40 – 9.
Dunne, “Tá Gaedhil bhocht cráidhte”(see above); “Subaltern voices? Poetry in Irish,
Popular Insurgency and the 1798 Rebellion”, in Eighteenth Century Life. Vol 22, n.s. 3,
November 1998, 31 – 44.
54
55
40
Tom Dunne
ued use of the key formulation ‘Gael re Gall’ – native against foreigner. Thus,
it could be used both by Máire Bhuí Ní Laoire to describe an affray between
local Whiteboys and Yeomen at Céim an Fhia, and by Raftery to describe
the achievement of Catholic Emancipation, which he defined as ‘Cead ag an
nGaedhealbheith chomh h’árd le Gaill’56 (permission for the Irishmen to be as
important as the foreigner). Seán Ó Braonáin characterised the sense of persecution, a constant in Gaelic poetry since the mid-seventeenth century – and
a rich vein in O’Connellite rhetoric – in terms of the lot of the ‘Gaelfhuil’
(those of Gaelic blood) being ‘gráin is galar is Gallaibh dá dtraochadh’ (hatred
and disease and foreigners wearing them down).57 Reverting to the theme of
law and persecution, one poem even claimed, ‘Beidh ann seisiúín ceathrúnach
idir Gaeil is clanna Gall’ (the Quarter Sessions will be held there between
the natives and foreigners.)58 In this period also, there is an interesting shift
from the use of the traditional ‘Sacsan’ (Saxon) to ‘Sasanach’(Englishman) in
describing the foreigner. In a well known aisling by Máire Bhuí, the ‘spéirbhean’ proclaims, ‘go bhfuil Sasanaigh is a n-áltha as an áit seo le ruagairt / Agus
Clanna Gael ’na n-áitreabh’ (the English and their brood will be driven from
this place and the native Irish replace them).59 Likewise, a poem, possibly by
Raftery, in praising the Ribbonmen, promised, ‘Beidh talamh ina luach agus
Clanna Gael suas / Agus Sasanaigh buartha cráite’ (land will have its true value,
the native Irish triumphant and the English sad and distressed).60 An even
more marked feature of the pre-Famine period is the greater frequency and
virulence by which the ‘Gall’ are anathematised in sectarian terms.
But the categorisation of the foreign enemy in terms of language also continues throughout this period. For Aogán Ó Rathaille they were ‘dream an
Bhéarla’; for Eughan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, ‘gallaibh an bhéarla’; for Ó Braonáin
the task of the Stuarts was ‘díbirt aicme an Bhéarla’ (the expulsion of the Englishspeaking tribe) and so on.61 Such usage took on new meanings as the pressure
for language change filtered down to the rural poor, ever more aware of the
D. Ó Donnchú (ed.), Filíocht Mháire Bhuí Ní Laoghaire (Dublin, 1931), 55 – 8; Douglas
Hyde, Amhráin atá leagtha ar an Reachtúire, or Songs ascribed to Raftery (Dublin, 1903),
266 – 71.
57
P. de Brún, Filíocht Sheáin Uí Bhraonáin (Dublin, 1972), No. 17, v. 2.
58
Tomás Ó Concheanainn (ed.), Nua-Dhuanaire, Chuid 111 (Dublin, 1978), No. 13, v. 4.
59
Ó Donnchú, Máire Bhuí, 59 – 60, “An Crúiscín Lán’, v. 5.
60
Ciarán Ó Coigligh, Raiftearaí: Amhráin agus Dánta (Dublin, 1987), 105 – 6. See 8 – 9 on
the authorship of this poem.
61
P. S. Dinneen, Dánta Aodhgháin Uí Rathaille (London, 1900), No. xxxv, lines, 177 – 8;
P. Ó Duinnín, Amhráin Eoghain Ruaidh Uí Shúilleabháin (Dublin, 1901), No. 13, line,
1060; de Brún, Ó Braonáin, No. 15, v. 3.
56
41
encroachments of the rapidly bureaucratising colonial state. It was particularly
marked in those poets still connected to the learned tradition, and fearful for
the very survival of the language itself – a theme I return to. It recurs constantly
in the work of Micheál Óg Ó Longáin, for example, who castigates ‘aicme an
Bhéarla’ (the tribe of English), ‘búir-bhoirb Bhéarla’(rough English speaking
boors), ‘Daoscar an Bhéarla’(English speaking rabble), ‘fanatics an Bhéarla’ (the
fanatics of English), ‘gramaisc an Bhéarla’(low-bred English speakers). In one of
his 1798 poems he has ‘aicme an bhéarla bhracaigh bhréin / ag tachtadh Gael le
claonta dlí (the foul corrupt crew of English speakers, choking the native Irish
with crooked laws) – again that key connection. In a formulaic piece, reflecting
his sense of hopelessness after the collapse of the rebellion, he urges ‘Clanna
Gael’ – ‘múchaidh, millidh, brisidh, réabaidh, / dúnta is tithe chine an Bhéarla’
(extinguish, destroy, break the forts and houses of the English speakers).62
Ó Longáin also exemplifies an interesting development in the Aisling, or
vision poem, that is, the connection of the language issue with the ‘spéirbhean’
or vision woman, representing Ireland – and hence associating it with patriotic
sentiment. Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, in the middle of the eighteenth century, had emphasised in several of his well known Aislingí that the spéirbhean
spoke Irish – in one case, indeed, she answered ‘i labharthaibh Gaeilge séimh
gan coimhitheacht’ (in sweet Irish, without foreign influence).63 This is an
interesting formulation by a man who composed verse in English as well as
Irish, and in his occasional role as schoolteacher proclaimed his expertise in
teaching English. By Ó Longáin’s time this formulation had become a commonplace, and in a late poem, after emphasising that the ‘spéirbhean’ spoke ‘i
dteangain deas Ghaeilge’ (in nice Irish), he records as her first complaint that
she was ‘greadaithe ag graithin an Bhéarla’ (scourged by the English-speaking
mob).64 Seventeen years later, in an Aisling written to commemorate Daniel
O’Connell’s release from prison, in September 1843, Aodh MacDomhnaill,
has the spéirbhean complain of the Irish people, ‘mar thréig siad an teanga
Ghaeilge’ (how they abandoned the Irish language)65 – something even the
Tadhg Ó Murchú, “Micheál Óg Ó Longáin; a shaoghal agus a shaothar” (M.A. Thesis,
and edition of Ó Longáin’s poems, University College Cork, 1946), 181, 191, 199,
206, 217, 181 (the 1798 poem); Rónán Ó Donchadha, Micheál Óg Ó Longáin: File
(Dublin, 1994), 103.
63
Dineen, Eoghan Ruadh, , No. 44, line 3133. See also No. 5, line 457.
64
Ó Murchú, “Ó Longáin”, 213 – 4. See also, Ó Donnchadha, Ó Longáin, 70; James
Fenton, Amhráin Thomáis Ruaidh ( Dublin, n.d.), No. xxi, v. 4; de Brún, Ó Braonáin,
No. 42, lines 26 – 8.
65
Colm Beckett, Aodh Mac Domhnaill: Dánta (Dublin, 1987), No. 8, v. 2.
62
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Tom Dunne
hitherto monoglot rural poor were doing in very large numbers, with the
encouragement of both Church and State, as catastrophe threatened and emigration was already a way of life. But the Aisling itself had long reflected the
relentless spread of bilingualism in the development of macaronic versions – indeed one of Ó Longáin’s early political poems, ‘Lá is me ag taisteal’, which he
linked to a Whiteboy outbreak, is an Aisling which alternates between verses
in Irish and English66.
Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin could also switch suddenly to English – and,
indeed, Latin – as in the humourous ‘Barántas’ or mock-legal challenge to the
person who stole his hat, in a verse that captures very well the sense of threat
that was associated with legal English:
As I am informed that pilfering roving / Rakes gan dearmaid (without
doubt) Juris quoque contempores / fé mar mheasaim-se (as I suppose)/
Nightly strollers haunt these borders / Déanaidh faire ceart (keep a
good look out) / To apprehend aon chladhaire faolchon (wolf-like
ruffian) / Claon-sprot cealgach (deceitful rabble)
He also managed in a series of dazzling verses the remarkable feat of marshalling the rebarbative names of the Cromwellians and Williamites to fit the
baroque internal rhymes that were his signature – for example:
Lysaght, Leader, Clayton, Compton is Coote, / Ivers, Deamer, Bateman,
Bagwell is Brooks, / Ryder, Taylor, Manor, Marrock is Moore / Is go
bhfeicim-se traochta ag tréin-shliocht Chaisil na búir. (And may I see
the Boors subdued by the mighty descendants of Caiseal)67
Now the foreign names are not of the comical Cromwellian rank and file
mocked by Ó Bruadair, but those of local Protestant landlords. Máire Bhuí
echoes this in describing the enemy faced by ‘Clannaibh Gaeil’, or the local
Whiteboys at ‘Cath Céim an Fhia’:
Is gairid dúinn go dtáinig lámh láidir ár dtimcheall / Do sheol amach ár
ndaoine go fíor-mhoch f ’ín gceo, / An Barrach ‘na bhumbáille, Bárnet
agus Beecher, / Hedges agus Faoitigh is na mílte eile leo.
Ó Murchú, “Ó Longáin”, No. B1. See also, Diarmaid Ó Muirithe, An tAmhráin
Macarónach (Dublin, 1980).
67
Dineen, Eoghan Ruadh, No. 39, No. 17.
66
43
(Before long a strong force surrounded us and sent our people out in
the early fog – Barry the bum-bailiff, Barnet and Beecher, Hedges and
White and thousands of others besides.) 68
The evolution of the Aisling from being a vehicle for the hopes of the dispossessed Gaelic elites for a restoration of the status quo ante by the dismantling
of the new colonial order, to being a voice for the smaller ambitions of the
rural poor in terms of rents, tithes and justice, can be seen in the way that
Ireland after a Stuart victory was imagined. For Aogán Ó Rathaille at the
start of the eighteenth century, restoration focussed strongly on the ambitions of the learned class – including, ‘Gaodhalg ’gá scrúdabh ‘n-a múraibh
ag éigsibhi / Béarla na mbúr ndubh go cúthail fá néaltaibh’ (Irish studied in
their fortresses by wise men and English of the black boors hidden under
a cloud).69 Over a hundred years later, Máire Bhuí Ní Laoire reflected the
interests of her class in telling the ‘spéirbhean’ that if her promises were true,
‘Beidh talamh gan chíos, gan íoc, gan cháin is gan phléidl / Beidh cruithneacht is im is saill ar an gclár againn féin (We shall have land without rent,
without tax or dispute. We shall have wheat and butter and fat meat on the
table for ourselves.)70 In her part of West Cork, even among the relatively
prosperous farmer class to which she belonged, Irish was still the language
of the community, differentiating it from ‘aicme an Bhéarla’. They did not
perceive the language itself to be under threat, as the dynamics of the market
economy accelerated the pace of anglicisation.
Concern for the survival of Irish was confined to the remnant learned
class, like the scribe Micheál Óg Ó Longáin, whose passionate advocacy of
the language was mainly on the basis that it was the depository of a great
literary tradition. I have argued elsewhere that the revivalist movement he
was associated with, led by the first professor of Irish at Maynooth, Pól
Ó Briain, had little interest in the popular culture of the living language,
and can been seen, together with the contemporary vogue for manuscript
collection and translation as part of the commodification of Irish, at the
very time that its last significant communities of speakers faced virtual
extinction.71 Yet, though dedicated to the protection of the literary tradition,
the process of revivalism and translation developed instead in ways that
O Donnchú, Máire Bhuidhe, 55 – 8, v. 3.
Dinneen, Ó Rathaille, No. xxviii, lines, 13 – 16.
70
O Donnchú, Máire Bhuidhe, 37 – 8, v. 7.
71
Dunne, “Tá Gaedhil bhocht cráidhte”, 109 – 10.
68
69
44
Tom Dunne
seriously distorted it, particularly when that process became part of a diffuse
project of cultural nationalism. A key text in this was James Hardiman’s Irish
Minstrelsy (1831), in which so-called ‘translations’, especially of Jacobite verse
by various hands, turned its visceral anti-foreign, anti-settler, anti-Protestant
sentiments into a bland pastiche of romantic patriotism that owed more
to English than Irish literature.72 Thomas Davis, generally regarded as the
father of Irish cultural nationalism, approved of this approach, believing
that the Jacobite originals were ‘too despairing’, ‘their religion bitter and
sectarian’.73 Pondering Davis’s view that ‘the vehemence and tendencies of
the Celtic people’ might be better represented, Douglas Hyde, founder of
the Gaelic League and collector of songs in Irish, and Father Dinneen,
lexicographer of the revived Irish and first editor of Aodhgán Ó Rathaille
and Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin, among others, determined that what Hyde
called ‘the Celtic poetic genius’ was ‘essentially a lyric one’.74 A complex,
largely inadvertent process of distortion and denial culminated in Daniel
Corkery’s The Hidden Ireland (1924), in which this staunch Republican,
who rejected the compromises of the Treaty, systematically excluded the
aristocratic, pragmatic political tradition of the Bardic poetry, and the
royalist, equally pragmatic perspectives of the Jacobite poets and songsters,
and turned the literary tradition once again into a miasma of lyricism
and sentimental nostalgia.75 None of this will surprise those familiar with
modern post-colonial scholarship, which has demonstrated time and again
that nationalism has not been an answer to colonialism but a product of
it, offering not an explanation or antidote, but a distortion. The fate of the
Irish language can be seen as the most significant consequence and proof
of the Irish colonial experience. Its suffocating embrace by nationalism has
both accelerated its decline and distorted its political and cultural contexts–
but, sin scéal eile (that’s another story).
University College Cork
James Hardiman (ed.), Irish Minstrelsy, or Bardic Remains of Ireland, with English poetical
translations (2 Vols, London, 1831). See, for example, Vol. 2, 32 – 63.
73
Thomas Davis, “Songs of the Nation’, in Thomas Davis: Essays and Poems, with a Centenary
Memoir, 1845 – 1945 (Dublin 1945), 97.
74
Ó Duinnín, Eoghan Ruadh, Introduction, xxxvi – vii; Douglas Hyde, “Gaelic Folksongs”,
in B.Ó Conaire, (ed.), Douglas Hyde: Language, Lore and Lyrics (Dublin, 1986), 104 – 21,
especially, 114.
75
Tom Dunne, “Daniel Corkery’s The Hidden Ireland, and the politics of the Gaelic
world’, in T. Dunne and L. M. Geary (eds), History and the Public Sphere: essays in honour
of John A. Murphy (Cork, 2005), 161 – 75.
72
Vincent Morley
The political sentiments of the Catholic population in eighteenth-century
Ireland have attracted comparatively little attention from historians. This
neglect can be partly explained by the exclusion of Catholics from the
political nation in the aftermath of the Williamite revolution. The state
papers for the eighteenth century provide little first-hand information about
Catholic attitudes and Catholics rarely engaged in political controversy in
print during the period. Furthermore, what little they published tended to
be of an apologetic nature: authors such as Charles O’Connor, John Curry
and Arthur O’Leary addressed their arguments to an English-speaking
and Protestant readership and sought to portray the Catholic community
as an innocuous and traduced body that could be safely entrusted with
greater rights without endangering either the religious or political establishments. But Catholic authors were not restricted to either print or the
English language, and a large corpus of unpublished political verse in Irish
was composed by and – what is no less important – for Catholics during the
eighteenth century.
Historians have been notably reluctant to employ the evidence of this
vernacular literature. Indeed, some members of the profession contend that
the political verse of the period cannot be accepted as an expression of popular opinion. In a recent discussion of my Irish Opinion and the American
Revolution, Professor S. J. Connolly invoked arguments that were advanced
by Professor Louis Cullen in an influential but mistaken article originally
published in 1969.1 He summarised Cullen’s key points as follows:
The first was that the resentment of the political and social order
expressed in so much of the vernacular poetry should be read as
representing the grievances, not of an oppressed peasantry, but rather
of a relatively ‘well-to-do’ group whose complaint was the loss of a
former privileged status. The second was a reminder of the importance
Louis Cullen, ‘The hidden Ireland: reassessment of a concept’ in Studia Hibernca, 9
(1969). The article was issued as a pamphlet in 1988.
1
46
Vincent Morley
of genre. ‘The aisling’, he pointed out, ‘was a literary form; not a
message for the people.’2
The second of these propositions was contested by Professor Breandán Ó
Buachalla in a ground-breaking article on the aisling which appeared as long
ago as 1983:
Nuair a deir an tOllamh Louis Cullen mar shampla, ‘The aisling was
a literary form, not a message for the people’, ní amháin go dtugann sé
le tuiscint nach bhféadfadh teachtaireacht a bheith ag aiste litríochta
ach go gceileann sé príomhfheidhm na haislinge: foirm liteartha a chur
ar an teachtaireacht, réaladh liteartha a chur ar ráiteachas na tairngreachta. Mar is chuige an aisling go bunúsach, ní chun go raghadh an
file ag válcaereacht dó féin cois abhann, cois coille, nó cois leasa dó go
huaigneach; ná ní chun go bhfeicfeadh sé an spéirbhean agus go dtabharfadh tuarascáil chalcaithe phréamhaithe uirthi; is chuige an aisling
chun go dtiocfadh an file ar an spéirbhean agus go bhfaigheadh uaithi
an teachtaireacht, an tairngreacht i dtaobh na ríochta.3
(When Professor Louis Cullen says, for example, ‘The aisling was a literary form, not a message for the people’, not only does he imply that a
literary composition cannot have a message but he conceals the principal function of the aisling: to give literary form to the message, to give
literary expression to the prophetic statement. For the essential purpose
of the aisling is not for the poet to go wandering alone by river, wood
or fairy fort; nor for him to see the spéirbhean and to give an ossified,
conventional account of her; the purpose of the aisling is for the poet
to encounter the spéirbhean and to receive from her the message, the
prophecy concerning the kingdom.)
I am not aware that this argument has been controverted in the twenty years
since it appeared in print and it seems to me to be incontrovertible. Not only
S. J. Connolly, ‘Jacobites, Whiteboys and republicans: varieties of disaffection in
eighteenth-century Ireland’ in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Iris an Dá Chultúr, 18 (2003),
75.
3
Breandán Ó Buachalla, ‘An mheisiasacht agus an aisling’ in P. de Brún, S. Ó Coileáin
and P. Ó Riain (eds), Folia Gadelica (Cork, 1983), 82. All translations in this article are
mine.
2
47
can messages be conveyed as effectively by the aisling as by most other literary
genres, but there is no essential linkage between the aisling and any particular
viewpoint. While it is true that the bulk of the aislingí composed during the first
half of the eighteenth century were Jacobite in sentiment, the same can be said
of Irish political literature in general. The aisling evolved in tandem with popular opinion, however, and by the time of the American revolution it expressed
a wider range of attitudes. Of the eight aislingí in an anthology of Irish verse
from the years 1775 – 83 that I edited, five are Jacobite works, two make no
reference to the Stuart pretender, and one might be described as a post-Jacobite
composition.4 The literary form of the aisling was not an ideological or a conceptual straightjacket; rather, it was a familiar and convenient vessel that could
be infused with whatever message suited the circumstances of the day.
The first leg of the historians’ thesis remains to be considered. If the ostensibly political verse of the eighteenth century really was political, it is certainly
valid to ask whose views it expressed. This question, like all historical questions, cannot be answered by theoretical speculation but only by empirical
study of the primary sources. My anthology contains twenty-one works by
thirteen named and one anonymous author. Two of these, Eoghan Rua Ó
Súilleabháin and Aindrias Mac Craith, are well-known poets with around sixty
compositions each to their credit. Ó Súilleabháin was born near Killarney in
obscure circumstances but received a hedge-school education and established
a school of his own in the locality; having been condemned by the local clergy for sexual misconduct he became an itinerant teacher while working at
times as an agricultural labourer. On his own testimony, he was impressed
into the marines during the American war – a circumstance indicative of low
social status – and he died as a result of injuries received in a drunken brawl
in 1784.5 Aindrias Mac Craith was one of the ‘Maigue poets’, a literary coterie centred on the village of Croom, Co. Limerick, where he taught school.6
Tomás Ó Míocháin, the author of more than twenty extant compositions, was
also a school teacher but was more successful in his profession than either Ó
Súilleabháin or Mac Craith: the son of a tailor, he established a ‘mathematical
school’ in Ennis, the county town of Clare, and his death in 1804 was noted in
Vincent Morley (ed.), Washington i gCeannas a Ríochta; Cogadh Mheiriceá i Litríocht na Gaeilge
(Dublin, 2005). See numbers 2, 3, 8, 12 and 13; numbers 7 and 14; and number 19
respectively.
5
Máire Ní Mhurchú and Diarmuid Breathnach, 1782 – 1882 Beathaisnéis (Dublin, 1999),
134 – 5.
6
Ibid., 63 – 4.
4
48
Vincent Morley
the local newspaper.7 Seán ‘Máistir’ Ó Coileáin is the only other figure among
the thirteen identified authors in my anthology to enjoy a significant literary
reputation; although he was not as prolific as the three mentioned above, a few
of his dozen or so compositions became exceptionally popular. Ó Coileáin was
the son of a tenant farmer and spent some time as a clerical student at Coimbra
in Portugal before returning in 1775 to establish a school near Skibbereen in
west Cork.8 Another four of the authors can be described as minor literary figures who have left small bodies of work. Séamas Ó Dálaigh was a tailor from
Mungret on the outskirts of Limerick city. Éamonn Ó Flaitheartaigh lived at
Ballynoe in east Cork, a rural area close to the Waterford border, but I have
failed to discover any information about his occupation. Uilliam Ó Lionnáin,
a scribe as well as an author, was a Kerry-born tailor but lived at Sixmilebridge
in Co. Clare. Seán Ó Muláin, a very prolific scribe, was a native of Passage
West in Cork harbour and spent much of his life in Cork city; the available
evidence suggests that he was quite poor and one of his works was composed
‘iar bhfáil ejectment nó foláireamh a chaitheamh amach as a thig ag Sasanaigh’
(‘after receiving an “ejectment” or a notice of his eviction from his house by
Sasanaigh’).9 Of the five remaining named authors in the anthology, Philip
Fitzgibbon and Ceallachán Mac Cárthaigh each left a solitary manuscript in
which the only known copies of their songs occur.10 While Fitzgibbon was a
teacher who established a ‘mathematical school’ in Kilkenny city and whose
death was noted in the national press, I have failed to discover any biographical
information about Mac Cárthaigh.11 The three others, Uilliam Ó Dábhoireann,
Seán Mac Cathail and Maoilsheachlainn Ó Dúill, are entirely unknown apart
from a single composition attributed to each of them – an obscurity suggestive
of low social status.
This brief survey of the authors’ diverse backgrounds provides little support for the thesis that the verse of the period represents ‘the grievances ... of
a relatively “well-to-do” group’. As for the argument that they were inspired
by ‘the loss of a former privileged status’, it may be noted that only two of
the authors in my anthology, Ó Dálaigh and Mac Craith, have surnames sug Ibid., 122 – 3.
Ibid., 87 – 8.
9
Breandán Ó Conchúir, Scríobhaithe Chorcaí 1700 – 1850 (Dublin, 1982), 166. ‘Sasanaigh’
might be translated as either ‘English’ or ‘Protestants’.
10
Ms. 23 D 8 in the Royal Irish Academy and Ms. G 6 in the Burns Library, Boston
College, respectively.
11
For notes on Fitzgibbon by Séamus Ó Casaide see Irish Book Lover, IX (1918), 74 – 5
and XXII (1934), 65.
7
8
49
gesting descent from professional bardic families. Crucially, the fallen status
of individual families does not feature as a theme in political verse from the
period of the American revolution. References to the defeat and oppression of
the Milesians and Catholics are common, but they are general and collective
rather than specific and particular in nature.12 They embrace the native community as a whole and complement equally generalised abuse directed against
the English and Protestants.13 The political literature of this period invokes
communities rather than individuals, ethnies rather than noble lineages, and
kingdoms rather than localities. It can still be argued that these compositions
are not the voice of the ‘peasantry’, that their authors, although they belonged
to neither a hereditary caste nor a social élite, were at least a few steps removed
from the mud cabin and the potato patch. One might therefore contend that
the literature should be seen as the voice of the Catholic middling sort: of
tenant farmers and priests, of retailers and craftsmen, and especially of school
teachers. This representation is true enough as far as production of the verse
is concerned, but its consumption is another matter. No cultural ‘fire-break’
existed between the landless labourers and those rural Catholics who were a
couple of rungs above them on the social ladder: they worshipped at the same
mass-houses (“tithe pobail” or ‘parish houses’ in Irish), attended the same fairs
and pátrúin (celebrations to mark the feast-days of local saints), spoke the same
language, and shared a literary culture that was primarily oral.14 It is reasonable to assume that they would also have sung the same songs and recited the
same poems. In the case of one of the ‘American’ songs – Seán Ó Coileáin’s
composition – this hypothesis can be proved because the work survived in the
repertoire of traditional singers in west Cork until the early years of the twentieth century.15 If the political songs were not composed by the illiterate, they
were sung by them.
One final objection by supporters of the historians’ thesis can be anticipated. It may be allowed that the authors were men of the middling sort, that they
Morley, Washington, number 1, line 10; number 2, line 30; number 7, line 19; number 9,
line 9; number 11, line 13; number 15, line 9; and number 18, line 14.
13
Ibid., number 2, line 31; number 2, line 40; number 3, lines 53 – 4; number 6, line 41;
number 13, line 61; and number 15, line 20.
14
One observer reported that public readings from Irish literary manuscripts were
‘considered by the peasantry a treat of the highest order, and large numbers will
assemble on a winter’s evening around the turf fire of a farmer’s cabin for the
purpose’. According to the same writer, the manuscripts were ‘usually the products
of the leisure hours of the schoolmaster’. See T. Crofton Croker, Researches in the
South of Ireland (London, 1824), 331 – 2.
15
Peadar Ó hAnnracháin, ‘Filidhe ó Chairbre’ in Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge 18 (1908), 265.
12
50
Vincent Morley
are as likely to have been rising as falling in social status, and that their compositions circulated among the illiterate. None the less, it may still be argued
that the sentiments they articulated were neither original nor genuine but were
copied uncritically from the literature of the 1690s and the early decades of the
eighteenth century, a time when members of the dispossessed Catholic gentry still entertained realistic hopes of a Stuart restoration and the recovery of
their attainted estates. In this way, compositions from the era of the American
revolution which articulate a partisan viewpoint can be discounted as ‘part of
a society’s folklore rather than its politics’.16 But the argument strains credulity
to breaking point. It presumes to relegate talented and (by the standards of the
time) educated men to the role of inanimate echo chambers, mindlessly intoning the mantras of a lost war, a vanished class and a bygone age. Furthermore, if
one could believe that such a mechanistic model was possible, one would expect
the attitudes expressed in the literature to be static and uniform; in reality, they
are dynamic and varied. We hear in the vernacular verse, not the monotone
voice of a fossilised tradition, but personal reactions to topical events: the siege
of Boston, Spanish invasion preparations, the British evacuation of Boston,
France’s entry to the war, an anticipated French invasion of Ireland, the campaign for ‘free trade’, Yorktown, the ‘renunciation’ campaign, opposition to the
Fencible regiments, etc.
It is almost certainly the case that a great many of the political songs and
poems composed during the American war have been lost, but the extant corpus is sufficiently large to allow the evolution of opinion to be traced over the
course of the conflict.17 The remainder of this article will attempt to give a brief
summary of that evolution.
II
A work composed by Uilliam Ó Dábhoireann during the first months of the
war when General Gage’s army was trapped in Boston displays an intense
hostility to Britain but contains no overt indication of sympathy for the colo S. J. Connolly, Religion, Law and Power: the Making of Protestant Ireland 1660 – 1760
(Oxford, 1992), 248.
17
It is striking that of the twenty-one compositions edited in Morley, Washington, as
many as seven (numbers 1, 5, 11, 16, 17, 18 and 20) appear to be found in only
one manuscript. The line between survival in a single copy and non-survival is a
perilously thin one.
16
51
nists whom it describes as ‘Presbyterians’. The piece begins with an ironical
expression of concern for the besieged British forces:
Is trua liom na scéalta do chuala go déanach,
im’ chluasa do chéas mé le sealad,
ar scuaine seo an Bhéarla do ghluais uaim le tréimhse
as cuanta na hÉireann go Boston;
le fuadar, le faobhar, dá bhfuadach le chéile
is dá scuabadh ins na spéarthaibh ina gceathaibh
le fuaim torann piléaraibh ag slua Presbytérian
– cé gur mhuar ar féasta iad is ar bainnis.18
(Grieved am I by the stories I’ve lately heard, that have pained my ears
for some time, about this English-speaking herd which set out some
time ago from the harbours of Ireland for Boston; with energy and arms
being driven together and being blown to the sky in showers, to the
sound of roaring bullets by a Presbyterian army – though they’d be great
at a feast or a banquet!)
Ó Dábhoireann made no distinction between the English and the Anglo-Irish,
and identified the members of the besieged army with the oppressors of the
Gaels: ‘ba bhuartha agaibh Gaelaibh’ (‘the Gaels were tormented by you’). Amid
much non-specific rhetoric about the oppression to which the native Irish were
subjected (‘dá suaitheadh le claonadh is le cleasaibh’ – ‘being shaken by deceit and
trickery’; ‘i gcrua-shnaidhm an daorbhroid’ – ‘in the harsh fetter of bondage’)
the Penal prohibition on Catholics leasing land for long terms was selected
for particular mention (‘gan buaineacht ’na saolaibh / a lua do na Gaelaibh ar
thalamh’ – ‘with no permanence in their lives assigned to the Gaels for land’).19
Ó Dábhoireann showed no interest in the matters at issue between Britain and
its colonies and his work gives no indication of any sympathy for the Americans
per se, but the mere fact that the oppressors of the Irish had suffered heavy casualties at the battles of Concord and Bunker Hill and were now hemmed into
the town of Boston was itself a cause for celebration – irrespective of either the
merits of the dispute or the identity of Britain’s enemy.
Early in the war, Seán Mac Cathail reworked the well-known Jacobite song
‘Síle Ní Ghadhra’ (one of many personifications of Ireland in the literature of
Morley, Washington, number 1, lines 1 – 8.
Ibid., lines 9, 10, 21 and 19 – 20 respectively.
18
19
52
Vincent Morley
the period) by incorporating contemporary references, not only to American
events but, more importantly from his perspective, to well-publicised Spanish
preparations for an overseas expedition. This song was as forthright as Ó
Dábhoireann’s composition in its hostility to Britain:
Tá an fhoireann so Luther dá dturnamh i ngach bóthar
Prussia ’s a chomplacht ag tnúth le Hannover,
Gage bocht i gcúngach dá bhrú ag Bostonians
Putnam á rúscadh is gan súil le teacht beo aige.
Ar bóchna atá an gasra in arm agus i bhfaobhar
a seol-bhrata ar leathadh ’s is maiseach a scéimh
chun fóirthin ar Bhanba ó anbhroid dhaor,
commander ceart Gaoidheal orthu, sweet Captain Reilly,
agus beidh an lá leis an mbuíon seo ag Síle Ní Ghadhra.20
(This crew of Luther’s is being vanquished on all sides, Prussia and its
forces are longing for Hanover, poor Gage is in battle and being crushed
by Bostonians, Putnam is pelting him and he doesn’t expect to escape
alive. At sea the soldiers are armed and keen, their sails are spread and
beautiful is their appearance, to rescue Ireland from cruel oppression, a
true commander of the Gaels at their head, sweet Captain Reilly, and
victory will belong to this band of Síle Ní Ghadhra’s.)
This Spanish expedition was described by the Annual Register as ‘the most
formidable in its preparations, of any in the present age’ and was commanded by General Alejandro O’Reilly, a County Meath-born veteran of
the Hibernia regiment in the Spanish service. Mac Cathail’s hope that the
force might be intended for Ireland was not entirely unreasonable – Britain
and Spain had come to the brink of war over the Falkland Islands only five
years before – but the expedition was in fact directed against Algiers.21 None
the less, Mac Cathail’s updated version of ‘Síle Ní Ghadhra’ testifies to the
prevalence of the idea that ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’.
It is clear that the possibility of war in Europe, rather than the existing
rebellion in North America, formed the principal theme of the political literature even during the first phase of the conflict – predictably enough as the
Bourbon powers alone seemed capable of upsetting the status quo in Ireland.
Ibid., number 2, lines 46 – 54.
Annual Register, 1775, 144.
20
21
53
While Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin lauded Benedict Arnold’s advance into
Canada at the head of an American army his reference to the war in North
America was little more than a rhetorical device to increase the credibility of
the imminent overthrow of the existing régime, as predicted to him by a spéirbhean personifying of Ireland:
‘Le sámh-thoil Dé fuair páis is péin
tá an báire ag téacht ’na gcoinne ar buile,
fágfaid, séanfid, rithfid sin
as caomh-chríoch Eoghain,
atá Arnold, laoch nár stán i mbaol,
ag fáil an lae ar an bhfoirinn uile,
an mál so ag maodhmadh, ag milleadh-bhriseadh
an chlaon-dlí nó;
tá ag téacht i mbarcaibh sár-dhíon go magh mhín Chuailgne
ag traochadh an tsleachta chráigh sinn, na táinte rí-ghas óg,
’s go crích mo shaoil ní shínfead féin
le smírle caoitheach cuil in iomaí
ar tigheacht mo Chaesar dhil, is guibhidh
é ’shuí i gcoróin.’22
(‘By the calm will of God who suffered passion and torment, the contest
is turning against them [the British] rapidly, they’ll leave, they’ll quit,
they’ll flee the beautiful land of Eoghan [Ireland]; Arnold, a hero who
never shirked danger, is vanquishing the entire crew, this hero is bursting and shattering the perverse new law; they are coming in stout ships
to the smooth plain of Cuailnge [Ireland], wearing down the race which
tormented us, hosts of majestic young warriors; and until the end of my
life I’ll never lie abed with a horrible foreign villain when my darling
Caesar [Charles Edward Stuart] arrives – and pray you for his coronation.’)
But however warmly they applauded American victories, Catholic authors
gave no indication of support for the Whig ideology of colonial patriots.
Military commanders like Arnold and Washington were praised but political leaders such as Hancock or Adams attracted no attention. The sympathy
Morley, Washington, number 3, lines 57 – 70.
22
54
Vincent Morley
of the Catholic populace for the Americans was superficial and rested on the
pragmatic calculation that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’.
An aisling by Éamonn Ó Flaitheartaigh, which appears to have been
composed sometime between Spain’s entry into the war in June 1779 and
Admiral Rodney’s relief of Gibraltar in the following January, reveals that an
element of ambivalence persisted in popular attitudes towards the Americans
for some time after their conclusion of a French alliance. On the one hand, Ó
Flaitheartaigh numbered them among those who were fighting against Britain
and extolled Washington’s prowess as a military leader; on the other hand,
he recognised the colonists’ British ethnicity and portrayed the war in North
America as a civil war among the traditional enemies of the Gaels. The usual
personification of Ireland addressed the poet:
Ba chiúin tais cneasta a bréithre líofa, gasta, léirghlic,
ag maíomh na startha léifid san saothar so romham,
ar sí ‘tá an aicme chraosach d’fhúig Gaoidhil le seal fá dhaorbhroid
ag cloí ’s ag creachadh a chéile is ní réidhfid go fóill;
atá an taoiseach fear go fraochta idir naimhde ba thaca déanach
i gcoimheascar catha is éirligh mar aon lena shlóigh –
Washington ’sa laochra, is nach tím i dtaisteal taobh leo,
is cúinse ar bith ní méin leis go ngéillfid dá ndeoin’.23
(Quiet, tender and kindly were her fluent, quick and perceptive words,
relating the accounts that will be read in this composition below, she
said ‘the voracious class which kept the Gaels in bondage for a time are
destroying and plundering each other and won’t settle yet; the leader of
men is ferocious among enemies who were recent allies, in a violent and
deadly struggle along with his army [are] Washington and his heroes,
and he’s not slow to march at their side, and he’s unwilling that they
should concede any terms voluntarily’.)
The Americans were still seen as Gaill – as anglophones and Protestants, the
progeny of Calvin and Luther. Strangely, however, they were now also ‘laochra’
(heroes). This is an entirely new perception in Irish political literature, a perception that I have not encountered in any work dating from before the period
of the American revolutionary war. For the first time, the view was expressed in
Ibid., number 7, lines 17 – 24. The emphasis is mine.
23
55
the vernacular literature that English-speaking Protestants were not necessarily
the invariable allies of Great Britain. Before long, this new perception would
be applied closer to home.
The American war precipitated an economic depression in Ireland which
worsened when fighting spread to European waters. The resulting economic
crisis provided the stimulus for a campaign against British mercantilist restrictions on Irish trade, a campaign which won the support of all sections of the
population during 1779. As the demands of Anglo-Irish patriots for ‘free trade’
became more clamorous and their rhetoric more populist and anti-British in
tone, it became increasingly easy for Catholics, familiar as they were with a vernacular political literature in which England’s oppression of Ireland formed a
central theme, to lend their support to the campaign for free trade. In another
novel development, prominent members of the parliamentary opposition were
lauded in Irish literature. Tomás Ó Míocháin composed a song in praise of
the leaders of the parliamentary opposition – Henry Grattan, Walter Hussey
Burgh and Barry Yelverton. The song was written, as Ó Míocháin explained,
‘ar bhfuascailt na nÉireannach ó dhaorchuing na Sacsan le saorarm sáirmhianach na Banban, dá ngoirtear Volunteers’ – that is, ‘on the liberation of the
Irish from England’s oppressive yoke by the high-minded free army of Ireland,
called Volunteers’. The opposition leaders were extolled in extravagant terms:
Ar Ghrattan ba náir gan trácht go taitneamhach,
cáidhfhear ceanamhail, cáilmhear, ceannasach,
seol scóip is trealamh gan tím;
is ba dheacair dá bhfágfainn bláth-Bhurgh beachtaithe,
ráib ler tagaradh cás na Banba,
i nglór beoil ba bheannaithe binn.
Ligeam ’na ndiaidh go dian gan dearmad
Yelverton fial ag fiach na bhfealladh-chon,
sciath gheal-tseasamhach, íodhan acmhainneach,
rialach, rabairneach, triathach, teanga-chlis,
lann óir is luiseag na nGaoidheal.24
(Grattan it would be shameful not to mention with affection, an
excellent amiable man, reputable and commanding, a spirited wellequipped guide without timidity; and harsh would it be were I to omit
24
56
Vincent Morley
polished and precise Burgh, a champion by whom Ireland’s case was
asserted, in diction that was blessed and sweet. Let us admit quickly
after them without fail, generous Yelverton hunting the treacherous
dogs, a bright and steadfast shield, a sturdy spear, regular, unstinting, lordly, quick-tongued, the golden blade and the knife-point of
the Gaels.)
This novel praise for members of a Hanoverian parliament by a Jacobite author
represented a frank recognition of the equally unrestrained and unprecedented nature of the rhetoric employed by opposition leaders during the critical
month of November 1779 when a short money bill and the demand for free
trade were in agitation. Hussey Burgh made the most memorable contribution to the debate on the short money bill when, referring to the Volunteers,
he observed that ‘the English sowed their laws like serpents’ teeth, and they
sprung up in armed men’; a contemporary report states that the House of
Commons ‘broke out in a burst of applause, which was echoed by the gallery’.25 It is not too fanciful to hear in Ó Míocháin’s song a more distant echo
of that burst of applause.
With the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781 it
quickly became apparent that American independence was a fait accompli and
that formal British recognition of the new reality was only a matter of time. In
the interim, the Franco-American victory was celebrated in Irish verse, both as
a welcome event in itself and also as an indication that the long-predicted end
of British rule was finally at hand. In an aisling composed by Seán Ó Muláin
the spéirbhean personifying Ireland rejoiced at the downfall of her oppressors
and lauded the hero of the hour, George Washington:
Tá Hannover séidte le tréimhse ag Washington
is na méirligh mhallaithe dá dtraochadh ar feo,
tá Holónt gan ghéill go fraochmhar feargach
’s is taomach treascartha atá [tréad] Liospóin;
geallaim daoibh gan chúinsí go bhfúigfidhear cathracha
ina múrthaíbh lasrach gan géilleadh don chóip,
beidh scriosadh ceart ar champaí an chamdhlí chealgaigh
’na gcamluí ar machaire ag téacht don fhómhar.26
Hibernian Magazine, August 1780, 452.
Morley, Washington, number 13, lines 49 – 56. The metre indicates that a word is missing
before ‘Liospóin’ and ‘tréad’ (gang) is my guess. The Portuguese yielded to a Franco-
25
26
57
(Hanover has been finished off by Washington for some time, and the
accursed plunderers are subdued and decaying, Holland hasn’t yielded
and is furious and angry, and the Lisbon [gang?] is moody and prostrate;
certain is the grim prospect that England will be left in a sea of flame
unless it surrenders to the band, the camps of the crooked treacherous
régime will be completely destroyed and lie twisted on the battlefield
with the coming of autumn.)
For Ó Muláin, the importance of Washington’s victory lay in the fact that the
power which vanquished Catholic Ireland in 1691 and triumphed over the
Catholic powers of Europe in 1763 had finally been humbled. He recognised
that one of the British empire’s most important possessions had thrown off its
dependency and anticipated a repetition of the process closer to home.
Britain’s defeat in North America and the weakened position of Lord
North’s ministry encouraged Anglo-Irish patriots to press their demand for
‘legislative independence’, a development which was applauded and associated with Britain’s military reverses in the vernacular literature. Ceallachán
Mac Cárthaigh praised the Volunteer delegates of Ulster and Connacht who
attended provincial meetings at Dungannon and Ballinasloe in the months of
February and March 1782 respectively:
Ag Baile na Slógh atá na slóite fearchoin –
beoga, calma, óga, groí,
is tuilleadh dá sórt atá ag pórt Dún Geanainn –
mórdha, macánta, cróga a ngíomh;27
(At Ballinasloe are hostings of heroes, vigorous, valiant, youthful, spirited, and more of their kind at the fort of Dungannon, noble, upright,
brave their deeds.)
But the same author’s gleeful anticipation of a Bourbon descent on Ireland
would have horrified the delegates whom he applauded:
Ciodh fada atá Seoirse brónach feargach
ag comhrac Washington, Jones is Lee,
is gur leagadh go leor dá chróntoirc leathana –
Spanish ultimatum and closed their ports to British warships in November 1780.
27
58
Vincent Morley
srónach, cealgach, glórach, groí;
atá Laoiseach fós ag tabhairt gleo dó is anfa,
Holónt á ghreadadh ’s an Spáinneach buí,
is fé thosach an fhómhair atá Fódla dearfa,
a chomhachta leagtha go deo nó á gcloí.28
(While George [III] has long been dejected and furious, fighting
Washington, [Commodore John Paul] Jones and [General Charles] Lee,
and many of his bloated swarthy boars have been felled – big-nosed,
treacherous, clamorous, stout; Louis [XVI] is still giving him tumult
and terror, Holland is lashing him, and the swarthy Spaniard, and by
the beginning of autumn Ireland is assured, his power will be overthrown forever or worn down.)
This recognition of the challenge which anglophone patriots on both sides of
the Atlantic now posed to the constitutional status quo existed alongside – but
did not supplant – older forms of disaffection, and Mac Cárthaigh also deployed
the stock Jacobite image of ‘Carolus Rex mar Caesar calma’ (‘King Charles
[Edward Stuart] like a valiant Caesar’).29
We are not restricted to the literary sources for evidence that popular
attitudes were changing. In 1787, four years after the end of the American
war and at the height of the Rightboy disturbances in Munster, an alarmed
pamphleteer reported that a group of Rightboys in west Cork had paraded behind ‘a fifer playing the White Cockade’, while an equally alarmed
MP declared in a parliamentary debate that another body of Rightboys
had paraded behind a more modern symbol of disaffection, the Stars and
Stripes.30 It would be difficult to envisage a more striking example of the
way in which living political traditions can combine elements of continuity
and change – of the way in which novel ideas can be absorbed without displacing older attitudes. The anglocentric student of political thought may be
inclined to dismiss the Rightboys’ medley of republican and Jacobite symbolism as evidence of the political ignorance of the Irish masses; if so, the
error lies in the attempt to bring English perspectives to bear on a very different society and culture.
Ibid., lines 1 – 8.
Ibid., line 27.
30
The O’Leariad. Translated into English Verse, and Illustrated with Notes (Dublin, 1787), 9
(footnote) and Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, 24 February 1787, respectively.
28
29
59
III
One message, one ‘prophecy concerning the kingdom’, was reiterated in Irish
verse throughout the American revolutionary war. The outcome foretold
time and again by the authors – and therefore, it is safe to assume, the outcome desired by their audiences – was that Britain would be defeated and the
Catholic nation would be restored to the rights of which it had been stripped
by the Williamite Revolution.31 This was a traditional aspiration but it was
also part of an evolving world-view, for the vernacular literature leaves no
doubt that popular attitudes changed fundamentally during the course of the
American revolutionary war. If the conflict was seen as a British civil war when
it began, by the time it ended English-speaking Protestant republicans – Generals George Washington, Nathanael Greene, Charles Lee, Commodore John
Paul Jones, among others – were being extolled in Irish verse. More importantly still, Anglo-Irish patriots were praised when they were perceived to be
acting in defence of Ireland’s interests.
These developments, which would have been inconceivable in the period
before the American revolution, were pregnant with possibilities.
Morley, Washington, number 2, lines 86 – 90; number 5, lines 19 – 20; number 6, lines
37 – 40; number 13, lines 59 – 62; number 17, lines 25 – 28; number 21, lines 61 – 4.
31
The oral tradition and literature in Ireland and Scotland:
Popular culture in Robert Burns and Charles Maturin
Jim Kelly
In a much recounted anecdote, the writer James Hogg recalled a meeting
between Sir Walter Scott and Hogg’s mother. Responding to Scott’s interest
in whether a particular song she had sung had ever been printed, Mrs Hogg
scolded Scott’s interest in printing what were orally transmitted ballads:
[There] war never ane o’ my sangs prentit till ye prentit them yoursel’,
an’ ye have spoilt them awthegither. They were made for singin’ an’ no
for readin’; but ye hae broken the charm noo, an’ they’ll never sung
mair.1
The anecdote serves perfectly to show the uneasy relationship between the
enthusiastic antiquarian, eager to ‘preserve’ remnants of an oral culture, and an
actual practitioner of that culture, suspicious of someone who transposes, and
thereby destroys, songs from an oral culture into a textual one.
The fault lines between an oral tradition and a modern print culture were
felt particularly strongly in Ireland and Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As I hope to show through readings of examples of
Robert Burns’ poetry and Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, the interface between a modern (print) culture and a primitive (oral) one could be
a remarkably ambivalent thing, raising issues of audience and reception that
were central to how authors positioned themselves in the literary marketplace.
Far from being clear, the opposition between oral tradition and print culture,
primitive and modern, was contingent upon a whole set of assumptions about
social class and national identity.
The concept of what constitutes an ‘oral tradition’ can be quite hard to
define. As Penny Fielding writes;
The oral is never simply one thing and what orality signifies in nineteenth-century writing cannot be understood without considering its
James Hogg. Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott (1843) (Stirling, 1909), 53.
1
62
Jim Kelly
uses as an agent in the creation and re-creation of cultural norms and
values. The oral is always the other: of writing (speech), of culture (the
voice of nature), of the modern (a pre-modern past).2
The oral thus becomes more significant for what it stands against then for what
it actually is. The idea of an oral tradition becomes a marker for modernity, “an
ever-moving point marking off our own present (whenever that might be) from
a long past.”3 The term ‘oral tradition’ had been used as early as the first half of the
seventeenth-century when it denoted all the practices of the Catholic Church
that existed outside of Holy Writ.4 Its modern sense comes from the late eighteenth-century when the distinction broadens to that between popular practices
and secular (written) authoritative discourses. While the term retained some
of its associations with Catholicism, it broadened out into a general descriptive term describing the method of transmission of practices and beliefs of the
(predominantly rural) lower-classes. As George Denis Zimmerman points out,5
John Brand was one of the first writers to use it in his republication of Henry
Bourne’s Antiquitates Vulgares (1777) to describe the customs and beliefs of an
illiterate rural populace. In his preface to the re-issue, Brand specifically sets the
oral tradition against a more public authoritative written word:
These [folk customs], consecrated to the Fancies of Men, by a Usage
from Time immemorial, though erazed by public Authority from the
written Word, were committed as a venerable Deposit to the keeping of
oral Tradition.6
While there is a residual linking of the oral tradition to popular religious practices Brand extends the remit of the phrase to include a whole set of cultural
practices.
Penny Fielding. Writing and Orality: nationality, culture, and nineteenth-century Scottish fiction
(Oxford, 1996), 4.
3
Fielding, Writing and Orality: 5.
4
The term had been used since the counter-Reformation to denote unwritten Catholic
practices. See Nicholas Hudson Writing and European Thought 1600-1830 (Cambridge,
1994), 188, n. 39. The OED lists a use of the term ‘oral tradition’ from as early as
1628.
5
George Denis Zimmermann. The Irish Storyteller (Dublin, 2001), 168.
6
John Brand. Observations on popular antiquities: : including the whole of Mr. Bourne’s Antiquitates
vulgares, with addenda to every chapter of that work: as also, an appendix, containing such
articles on the subject, as have been omitted by that author (Newcastle upon Tyne: 1777), iv.
Emphasis in the original.
2
The oral tradition and literature in Ireland and Scotland
63
Whether Brand uses the term ‘oral tradition’ or ‘popular antiquities’, there
is, as Diarmuid Ó’Giolláin points out, a distancing of what is being described
from the people who are describing it:
All of the terms [to describe practices and beliefs] were based on distance
between the observer and the observed – distance in time (‘antiquities’,
‘survivals’) or distance in social class (‘folk’, ‘popular’).7
Brand’s distinction between a written public authority and oral tradition is a
useful starting-point from which to compare the treatment of oral culture in
Burns’ poetry and in Melmoth the Wanderer. Brand’s distinction carries with it
the sense that the written, textual word has a greater claim to public agency
and yet is fundamentally unable to erase all forms of popular tradition from
the national record. It neatly prefigures a public sphere that is resolutely textual, yet it also acknowledges that there are alternative forms of knowledge
and cultural transmission outside that sphere. The oral tradition becomes a
‘deposit’, a national storehouse, for folk customs.
Yet while this seems to give some residual agency to the oral as repository of popular memory, the written word is the form in which these folk
customs will eventually survive (namely, in Brand’s reissue of Bourne’s book).
Folk culture goes through a sort of ‘double authorisation’, therefore. It is, on
the one hand, consecrated through memory, becoming authoritative through
its survival outside of the modern world of a public print-media. On the other
hand, the only way in which it can be appreciated by the modern audience is
to be recuperated from being merely ‘a venerable Deposit’ through the means
of the public authority of the written word. It is authorised, in other words, by
being both outside print-media yet only knowable to a polite audience by the
authority of print-media. Colin Graham’s remarks about Yeats’ Fairy and Folk
Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888) might prove useful in observing the relationship between the ‘authentic’ folktale and the ‘authorising’ medium in which it
is presented to the public:
Yeats’s ambiguous control over the authenticity of his material reveals
in its triple-level of authentication (tales, storytellers, folktale-collectors) that authenticity thrives on the textuality and substance of its
medium . . . Textuality seems to provide the material existence which
Diarmuid Ó’Giolláin. Locating Irish Folklore: tradition, modernity, identity (Cork, 2000),
32 – 3.
7
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Jim Kelly
authenticity needs in tandem with its resistance to definition – its mystique is maintained and evidenced, while what is actually ‘authentic’ is
filtered through further authenticating processes (folk tales are themselves authenticated democratically by their tellers, then approved and
re-authorised by their collectors/editors).8
The authenticity of folk customs therefore exists due to both its status as an
alternative to print-media, and its subsequent absorption into and ultimate
legitimisation by/of print-media. They provide an alternative form of knowledge
yet that form of knowledge can only be activated and transmitted to a wider
audience by means of the very form outside of which it is supposed to operate.
The textual authority of the book is needed to reincorporate oral tradition
into the national imagination as ‘at once a troublesome site of contested
authenticity and a figure of national origin’.9 The oral tradition, then, is an
alternative system of knowledge yet paradoxically it is always already contained
as an object within the system that it is an alternative to. The ‘vulgar’ practices
of the common people, recuperated by an enlightened form of ethnography
‘could be used to certify the specificity of a nation, and to justify the restoration
of its rights if they seemed endangered’.10
We can see a distinct role that the peasant culture plays within the modern
social sphere. By the act of being published it confirms both an organic base
for the national community, and in its appropriation by the very medium
to which it is seen as a counterpoint, i.e. print-media, it gives the nation a
sense of its own modernity. These incongruous positions (organic tradition
and commercial modernity) are only seemingly incongruous. The urge that
leads to an ethnographic recuperation of peasant culture in effect credits that
culture with its organic national connotations. An amorphous body of stories,
songs, and practices can only become an ‘oral tradition’, that is, something
somehow uncontaminated by a commercial modernity, through its definition
in print. As Diarmuid Ó Giolláin writes on the relationship between folklore
and nationalism:
There was a liberating and validating dimension to the discovery of folklore, legitimising the traditions of a population that had usually been
Colin Graham. Deconstructing Ireland: Identity, Theory, Culture (Edinburgh, 2001), 144.
Italics in original.
9
Fielding, Writing and Orality, 9.
10
Zimmerman, Irish Storyteller, 168.
8
65
denigrated, giving them the status of culture, and allowing ordinary
people to participate in the building of a nation. Folklore archives were
ideologically informed, but represented the cultural production of the
common people and formed a unique body of documentary evidence,
which by their very existence offered an alternative to a view of history
and culture as the work of ‘great men’.11
When we come to examine how folk customs appear in writers as different as
Burns and Maturin, therefore, we need to examine not only how they appropriate folk beliefs into their text, but also how they comment on the very
process by which material from an oral tradition is presented within a textual
artefact.
Towards the beginning of Melmoth the Wanderer, Maturin gives a description of a local Wise Woman and some of the methods by which she entrances
the local population. It is the longest sustained description of folk superstitions
given in any of Maturin’s works:
[I]f there were no lives to be shortened, there were fortunes to be
told; – she worked ‘by spells, and by such daubry as is beyond our element.’ No one twined so well as she the mystic yarn to be dropt into
the lime-kiln pit, on the edge of which stood the shivering inquirer into
futurity, doubtful whether the answer to her question of ‘who holds?’
was to be uttered by the voice of demon or lover.
No one knew so well as she to find where the four streams met, in
which, on the same portentous season, the chemise was to be immersed,
and then displayed before the fire, (in the name of one whom we dare
not mention to ‘ears polite’), to be turned by the figure of the destined
husband before morning. No one but herself (she said) knew the hand
in which the comb was to be held, while the other was employed in
conveying the apple to the mouth, – while, during the joint operation,
the shadow of the phantom spouse was to pass across the mirror before
it was performed. No one was more skilful or active in removing every
iron implement from the kitchen where these ceremonies were usually
performed by the credulous and terrified dupes of her wizardry, lest,
instead of the form of a comely youth exhibiting a ring on his white
finger, an headless figure should stalk to the rack, (Anglicè, dresser), take
Ó’Giolláin, Locating Irish Folklore, 76.
11
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Jim Kelly
down a long spit, or, in default of that, snatch a poker from the fire-side,
and mercilessly take measure with its iron length of the sleeper for a coffin. No one, in short, knew better how to torment or terrify her victims
into a belief of that power which may have reduced the strongest minds
to the level of the weakest . . .’12
What seems to be a straightforward piece of auto-exoticism listing peasant
customs becomes more complicated if we look at the source for these beliefs.
For unlike a novelist like Lady Morgan, who took pains to present interpolated
recordings of Irish customs as coming straight from the local cottage, we are
not getting something ‘authentic’ in this passage. Maturin had a negligible
interest, or opportunity to interact with, the rural populace. This is not popular culture mediated to the literate public from some reservoir of archaic folk
customs. What we have instead is a straightforward prose rendition of folk
customs mentioned in Robert Burns’ poem ‘Halloween’. When we look closer
at the text of ‘Halloween’, it becomes apparent that even that provides a more
complicated account of the relation between a literary work and the customs
it describes.
The introduction Burns provided for his poem locates the peasant’s desire
for knowledge of futurity in the ‘rude’ state of society, showing the influence
of Scottish Enlightenment social theorists:
The passion of prying into futurity makes a striking part of the history
of human nature in its rude state, in all ages and nations; and it may
be some entertainment to a philosophic mind, if any such honour the
author with a perusal, to see the remains of it, among the more unenlightened in our own.13
Burns is presenting to an enlightened audience these practices as ahistorical, and
thus recovering folk practices into an enlightened historicity. The ethnographic
listing of folk customs is proffered to the reader as perhaps being of ‘some entertainment to a philosophic mind’. Its entertainment value lies in the fact that it
grants the reader an insight into a more natural, pre-civilised stage of mankind.
It returns the reader, therefore, to the savage stage, the ‘rude state’ that precedes
Charles Maturin. Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), ed. Douglas Grant (Oxford, 1968), 11.
Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text.
13
Robert Burns, ‘Halloween’. The Canongate Burns, ed. Andrew Noble and Patrick Scott
Hogg (Edinburgh, 2001), 74.
12
67
the enlightened audience of the poem. The idea that one is returning to a more
natural state that is to be valued for the insight it gives into a universal human
nature is vitally important. Yet Burns does not preclude the possibility that to
some of his readers the folk customs will already be familiar:
The following poem will, by many readers, be well enough understood;
but for the sake of those unacquainted with the manners and traditions
of the country where the scene is cast, notes are added.14
Burns’ ideal readership, therefore, will contain both those who recognise the
customs described as well as a more (modern) philosophical reader who will be
able to place such beliefs within a larger framework of comparative historical
concepts.
A good example of this ambivalent position of audience and text can be
seen in a less well-known poem; ‘Address to the People of Scotland, Respecting
Francis Grose, Esq; the British Antiquarian’ which appeared in The Northern
Star, April 14, 1792. While there is no direct evidence that Maturin might
have read this, the presentation of folk material and the processes by which it
is presented are relevant to the strategies employed in Melmoth the Wanderer.
The poem was introduced by the enlightened editorship of The Northern
Star:
The following address to the People of Scotland, was written by Mr Robt.
Burns, the Ayrshire Poet, when Capt. Grose, the British Antiquarian,
was on his peregrination in Scotland, in the year 1791, collecting materials for his publication of the antiquities of that country.
The ideas in this, like the rest of Mr Burns’s productions, are singular
and eccentric, and exhibits a just picture of the sentiments of the low
peasantry of Scotland, respecting any gentleman who is professedly an
Antiquarian – He is deemed to be in colleague with satan, and to be
a dealer in magic and the black art, a vulgar prejudice, which all the
light and learning of the present day, have not yet been able totally to
eradicate.15
This is followed by Burns’ poem, written in dialect:
Ibid. 74.
‘Address to the People of Scotland’, The Northern Star, April 14 – 16 (1792), 7. Hereafter
cited parenthetically in the text.
14
15
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Jim Kelly
Hear, Land o’ Cakes, and brither Scots,
Frae Maiden Kirk, to Johnie Groat’s,
If there’s a hole in a’ your coats,
I red you tent it;
A chield’s amang you taking notes,
And faith he’ll prent it. (1 – 7)
We have multiple perspectives here. On the one hand enlightened readers
will label the oral tradition and superstitious practices of the peasantry as a
means by which we can delineate human nature in a primitive state. This poem
by Burns though, is written from the other side. Here the antiquarian is an
intruder, and the threat to the community is that he will print the notes he
takes. Yet the poem is in turn presented by the editor as detailing superstitions
that are assumed to be alien to the presumed readership of The Northern Star.
The poem, in other words, addressed to the people of Scotland, is reconfigured
as addressed to an enlightened cosmopolitan audience, and it performs the
same act of ‘printing’ that is threatened by Grose. There are then at least two
audiences addressed in the poem and its textual apparatus that are presented as
mutually antagonistic. What the poem also does, however, is invest the figure
of the antiquarian with precisely those supernatural elements that he is supposedly recording:
At some auld howlet-haunted biggin,
Or kirk defected by its riggin,
It’s ten to one ye’ll fine him snug in
Some eldritch part;
Wi deils, they say, Lord save’s! colleaguing
At some black art. (15 – 21)
Burns even points out Grose’s military background (It’s tauld he was a sodger
bred/And one wou’d rather fa’ than fled [25 – 26]). His choice to “taen the
Antiquarian trade” (29) is intimated to be just an extension of this, a practice
that replaces actual violence with a type of cultural violence. The placing of the
poem in the Northern Star is interesting though. We have here a confluence
(albeit an uneasy one) between separatist republicanism and popular culture.
The popular antiquities that antiquarians were so enthusiastic about are just
as open to different political interpretations as the print-media. In the 1790s
the oral tradition was as often a repository of potentially radical and subversive
69
sentiment as it was of ethnographic observation. As Marilyn Butler points
out when discussing the antiquarian Joseph Ritson’s reprinting of English oral
tales and ballads, such forms were seen as full of ‘democratic implications’.16 In
Burns’ case, a poem about the danger to a community by a soldier turned antiquarian is itself transformed by the preface into a poem worthwhile because of
its veracity as an ethnographic document in its own right.
We can see in ‘Address to the People of Scotland’, then, some of the issues
of audience that are brought up in the poem that Maturin plagiarises. The
dichotomy between an address to an organic community and a modern readership is represented in Burns’ poem ‘Halloween’ by the presence of footnotes
describing in Standard English the customs presented in Scots in the poem
itself:
Wee Jenny to her Graunie says,
Will ye go wi’ me, Graunie?
I’ll eat the apple at the glass,
I gat frae uncle Johnie:’
Take a candle and go alone to a looking glass; eat an apple before it, and
some traditions say, you should comb your hair all the time; the face of
your conjugal companion, to be, will be seen in the glass, as if peeping
over your shoulder.17
At least for part of Burns’ readership, then, the customs mentioned are part
of a living tradition. Unlike, for example, the Irish originals of Ossian that are
mentioned in The Wild Irish Girl but are nowhere directly presented, Burns
presupposes that some of his readership will have had direct contact with these
customs, if not having practised some of them themselves.
Maturin’s plagiarising of Burns’ poem implies quite a different readership.
Instead of the quasi-communal aspect of Burns’ introduction, we have the
folk customs presented to an audience who will have encountered them in a
prior published text rather than in real life. If the reader of Melmoth recognises
the customs mentioned, therefore, it is not because s/he is a Scottish peasant
(presumably) but because s/he might have read of those customs previously.
We are therefore presented with a subtle intertextuality that locates these cus Marilyn Butler. Burke, Paine, Godwin, and the Revolution Controversy (Cambridge, 1984),
203.
17
Burns, ‘Halloween’, 78.
16
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Jim Kelly
toms as belonging to a community of readers rather than of practitioners. This
separates the listing of folk customs in Maturin’s novel from similar auto-exotic
moves in novels like Castle Rackrent or The Wild Irish Girl. Whereas they were
involved in ‘the tendency to employ footnotes and digressions in order to represent a ‘real Irish’ local or historical background’,18 Maturin’s deployment of
folk culture draws attention to the whole process by which that culture is
absorbed and legitimated by the very print culture outside of which it is supposed to operate. The ‘priority’ of the folk customs in terms of their ahistoricity
in relation to the ‘enlightened’ text is deconstructed, leaving them presented
as bound up within that historicity, as part of a recognisable series of literary
tropes already before the reader.
As such, the ‘local colour’ in Melmoth the Wanderer can be seen to be reducing the authenticity of the Irish oral tradition that would make it of moral and
cultural value to the nation. Biddy Brannigan, the old woman who is characterised as ‘witch-like’ seems to be portrayed solely in a negative light along
with the cultural traditions that she supposedly represents. She lives a ‘squalid
existence by practising on the fears, the ignorance, and the sufferings of beings
as miserable as herself ’ (10). There are suggestions, though, that her role as
local witch is not exclusively negative. What is important though, is to note
how her practices vary according to the class she is addressing:
Among the better sort, to whom she had sometimes had access by the
influence of servants, she tried the effects of some simples, her skill in
which was sometimes productive of success. Among the lower orders
she talked much of the effects of the ‘evil eye’, against which she boasted
a counter-spell, of unfailing efficacy; and while she spoke, she shook
her grizzled locks with such witchlike eagerness, that she never failed to
communicate to her half-terrified, half-believing audience, some portion of that enthusiasm which, amid all her consciousness of imposture,
she herself probably felt a large share of . . . (10)
In other words, Brannigan has a sometimes restorative effect on the ‘better sort’, while her relationship with her own class is characterised by both
imposture and ‘enthusiasm’ – she practices a form of spiritual enslavement.
It is possible that we have here the central problem involved in appropriating folk customs into polite literature in both Ireland and Scotland in
Joep Leerssen, Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary
Representation of Ireland in the Nineteenth-Century (Cork, 1996), 37.
18
71
the early nineteenth century. The fundamental misunderstanding between Sir
Walter Scott and Mrs Hogg is strategically investigated by both Burns and
Maturin in their very different texts. On the one hand is the beneficent effect
of introducing a polite readership to peasant culture, while on the other is the
enlightened recognition that such practices when performed among the classes
from which they come, ‘the lower orders’, are a purely negative. Maturin’s
version of folk culture and the oral tradition operates in that liminal space
suggested by Burns in the introduction to ‘Halloween’ between enlightened
observers and credulous practitioners. We have here both a celebration and
censoring of folk customs, a recognition that the appeal and function of folk
customs varies in type across class boundaries. As such, the appropriation of
folk material into polite culture as relics of a ‘venerable deposit’ can be construed as a process with definite class implications. As the ideological battles of
the 1790s had demonstrated, certain practices and popular traditions could be
recuperated for specifically radical ends. Folk customs, in other words, become
invested with social and political capital not a priori but through their mediated appearance before ‘the better sort’. What invests the oral tradition with
symbolic capital is not some essential quality it possesses, but the manner in
which it is appropriated by modernity.
University College Dublin
Setting His Own Standard:
James Orr’s Employment of a Traditional Stanza Form
Carol Baraniuk
The close engagement of the eighteenth-century Ulster-Scots radical poets
with the works of Burns has recently attracted scholarly interest,1 but as John
Hewitt pointed out over thirty years ago an Ulster tradition of writing in Scots
began well in advance of the Burns era:
[. . .] the first printed verses by a local author in Scots figure in a
broadsheet from Strabane, about 1735, in the stanza sometimes called
after Burns, but far older than his practice, and more accurately known
as Standard Habbie [. . .] A little later than the Strabane broadsheet,
our first anthology of prose and verse, The Ulster Miscellany (1753)
has a section of seventeen pages under the heading of Scotch Poems,
several of which specifically relate to the Scots-planted pocket in east
Donegal.2
Several generations after the Ulster Plantations, the descendants of former
colonists appear to have remained hungry for Scots reading material.
Certainly, even before Allan Ramsay began producing contemporary vernacular works, literary masterpieces of the Middle Scots period were being
re-printed in Belfast. These included Alexander Montgomerie’s The Cherrie
and the Slae3 and the Works of Sir David Lindsay.4 Also popular were The
Bruce of John Barbour, Blind Harry’s The Life and Acts of Sir William Wallace
and lurid tales in English relating the experiences of persecuted Covenanters.5
Reading habits suggest that throughout the eighteenth century, the UlsterScots identified with Scotland’s heroic, independent past and her national
Liam McIlvanney, Burns the Radical: Poetry and Politics in Late Eighteenth Century Scotland
(East Linton, 2002), 220 – 40.
2
John Hewitt, Rhyming Weavers and Other Country Poets of Antrim and Down (Belfast, 2004),
3.
3
Re-printed in Belfast in 1700.
4
Re-printed in Belfast, 1714.
5
J. R. R. Adams, The Printed Word and the Common Man: Popular Culture in Ulster 1700 – 1900,
(Belfast, 1987); Appendix I, “Ulster Publications, 1699 – 1800”, 175 – 81.
1
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Carol Baraniuk
and religious martyrs. The appetite for potentially subversive texts can only
have been sharpened by those aspects of the Penal Laws, such as tithes and
Test Acts,6 to which Presbyterians were subjected. Those Ulster poets who
produced vernacular verse, therefore, were responding to local demand and
supplying a well-established market.
Naturally, once a branch of the Scots literary tradition had taken root in
Ulster it developed its own character, not least through close engagement with
specifically Irish issues and the exploration of these from a northern dissenting viewpoint. In the hands of the best poets, such as the United Irish radical,
James Orr of Ballycarry, the result is a unique exploitation of traditional Scots
genres and language which expresses a too-long unacknowledged aspect of
Irish identity.
John Hewitt credited Orr with ‘a craftsman’s authority’ in his manipulation
of the great Scots stanza forms.7 Undoubtedly his handling of standard habbie
is both fluent and secure, but he followed in the wake of the three Scots masters, Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns, each one of whom, in diverse ways, made
this form his own. This essay will explore James Orr’s employment of standard
habbie and his success in finding expression for his unique voice within this
familiar structure. In this respect, Orr’s work may also be seen to represent a
further stage in the stanza’s evolution.
The general effect of the stanza’s pattern is friendly to satirical verse. The
initial three rhyming iambic tetrameters permit an idea to be set out and
apparently concluded in the following dimeter, but lines five and six, which
echo the rhyme scheme of three and four, may be utilised for the addition of
a satirical rider or cynical afterthought. Robert Semphill of Beltrees exploited
some of the possibilities of the form in his mock elegy ‘The Life and Death
of Habbie Simpson’ in which the re-iteration of the fact that ‘Habbie’s dead’,
with minimal variation throughout thirteen stanzas, progressively generates a
reductive effect that undercuts the professed grief of the speaker.
While the roots of the form may be traced to troubadours who performed in
a courtly setting, Alan Ramsay successfully employed standard habbie to voice
the thoughts of tavern and brothel keepers, or of their clients. Furthermore, he
sited it firmly within the poetry of the city, revealing an alternative Edinburgh
that could be both riotous and irreverent, as the following lines from his ‘Elegy
on Maggie Johnson’ illustrate:
The Test Act required any person wishing to hold public office to take the sacrament
in the Anglican Church.
7
Hewitt, Rhyming Weavers, 94.
6
75
Fou closs we us’d to drink and rant,
Until we did baith glowre and gaunt
And pish and spew, and yesk and maunt,
Right swash I true;8
Despite the apparent subversion of propriety, however, the conclusion of
Ramsay’s ‘Elegy’ offers a reminder of a more conventional moral framework.
The uncomfortable issue of judgement in the afterlife is raised, while in an
echo of ‘Habbie Simpson’, the speaker grimly stresses the irrevocable finality
of death:
Let a’ thy gossies yelp and yell,
And without feed,
Guess whether ye’re in heaven or hell,
They’re sure ye’re dead.9
Robert Fergusson, in ‘The Daft Days’10, also chooses to celebrate the tavern
culture of the capital, but builds on Ramsay’s achievement to produce a work
of far greater complexity and sophistication. The opening meditation, an
atmospheric representation of the countryside in ‘mirk December’, allows him
to incorporate elements of pastoral, but as a prelude to the speaker’s rejection
of the fields in favour of the vigorous conviviality of city life on dark winter
evenings. The poem effectively voices the drawing power which the city continually exercises, particularly over young people, in every generation, while the
celebratory mood thus engendered is further extended to accommodate cultural nationalism. His scenes of ‘mirth’ and ‘social cheer’ never attain the level
of excess depicted in Ramsay’s anarchic cameos, but the stanza’s association
with insubordination and dissidence is perpetuated in Fergusson’s mocking
finale. Here, with assumed piety, he supplicates the ‘great god of Aquae Vitae’,
for protection from the forces of law and order whom he disrespectfully designates “that black banditti, / The City-Guard”.
Though Ramsay and Fergusson exploited standard habbie with great
originality, Burns may be said to have customised it, employing it to portray
numerous highly individual personalities and as a vehicle for the expression of
Allan Ramsay, ‘Elegy on Maggie Johnson’ in A. M. Kinghorn and A. Law (eds), Poems
by Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson (Edinburgh, 1974), 4.
9
Ibid., 6.
10
Ibid., 121 – 3.
8
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Carol Baraniuk
his own multi-faceted verse persona. His dramatic monologue, ‘Holy Willie’s
Prayer’, is potentially as shocking as Ramsay’s ‘Lucky Spence’s last Advice’, but
exhibits a much more finely-tuned form of satire as Burns exposes the deception of others and of self that typifies the religious hypocrite. Donald Low
has commented that ‘It is difficult to over-estimate the significance of ‘standart habbie’ in the case of Burns’,11 pointing out that Burns greatly extended
the range of its possible applications. As examples Low cites the ‘Elegy on
Captain Matthew Henderson’, in which the stanza is shown to be suitable for
the expression of genuine grief, and ‘The Vision’ which widens its range still
further to ‘include the communication of serious ideas’.
Certainly, all the major themes of Burns’s oeuvre are explored in the standard
habbie poems: religion, his poetic calling, Scotland and its symbols, regional
identity, natural beauty, friendship, sexual conquest and radical opinions. The
richness of this component of his work is in large part due to the variations
in voice he achieves within and between poems. He speaks as Rab the Ranter,
Robin Ruisseaux, Robert Burns, as the libertarian, the passionate lover, the
predator, the rationalist, the guid billie, the tease, the penetrating satirist,
the inspired visionary, the irreverent rhymer. Through this series of skillfullyadopted poses, it becomes clear that Burns the poet is determined to resist
pigeon-holing by remaining elusive, uncommitted and apart.
Consider first of all those verse epistles in which Burns himself appears to
speak through the medium of a first person narrator. Liam McIlvanney argues
that these are genuine, intimate letters which ‘put the reader in a subordinate
position, looking over Burns’s shoulder at verses meant principally for the eyes
of another [. . .]. The epistles shut us out [. . .]. The result is a self-regulating
community that requires no corroboration, no endorsement from the outside
world’.12 McIlvanney also characterises the epistles as a kind of ‘pub talk or
blether’,13 an evaluation borne out by reference to much of the content. Such
talk is rarely noteworthy for its sensitivity or diffidence and, certainly, the voice
in the ‘Epistle to John Rankine’14 is that of a swaggering sexual predator, ‘a
rovin with [his] gun [. . .] of guns the whale’. The same poem expresses the
speaker’s exasperation with the busy-bodying of the moral guardians from the
‘Poacher-Court’ and ‘all their blethers’, independent sentiments which many
Donald Low, Robert Burns (Edinburgh, 1986), 47.
Liam McIlvanney, Burns the Radical, 103.
13
Ibid., 102.
14
Robert Burns, The Complete Poetical Works, ed. James A. MacKay (Darvel, Ayrshire,
1997), 82 – 4.
11
12
77
twenty-first century readers would endorse. It must be acknowledged, however, that the objectifying and belittling of the woman as ‘a paitrick’, ‘it’ and
‘a poor wee thing’ achieves a less than timeless resonance. The poet’s welcome
to his illegitimate daughter demonstrates a more responsible treatment of the
consequences of sexual adventures even as it challenges conventional attitudes.
Here the impression created is of a man of intense tenderness, courage and
natural justice:
And if thou be what I wad hae thee,
An tak the counsel I shall gie thee,
I’ll never rue my trouble wi thee –
The cost nor shame o’t –
But be a loving father to thee,
And brag the name o’t.15
‘Adam Armour’s Prayer’ appears to have been written in disgust, to expose
bullying which is masquerading as the enforcement of high moral standards.
Burns effectively captures a narrative voice of gloating, thuggish bravado and
sexual sadism, showing how the process of mob ‘justice’ allows free rein to the
worst aspects of human nature:
[. . .]we stang’d her through the place,
An hurt her spleuchan [. . .].
As for the jurr – puir worthless body!
She’s got mischief enough already;
Wi’ stanget hips and buttocks bluidy
She suffer’d sair;16
As the speaker lingers with satisfaction over the intimate details of the humiliation and of the wounds to the female parts, one suspects that the suffering
inflicted has contributed to his own arousal. The poem provides further evidence of Burns’s capacity to stand apart from his community, at odds with its
judgementalism and its licensed brutality.
While on some occasions Burns seeks to give the impression of carelessness
in composition, claiming that his verses come ‘rattling at ither’s arses’,17 in the
Ibid., 113.
Ibid., 198 – 9.
17
‘To A Haggis’, ibid., 264 – 5.
15
16
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Carol Baraniuk
case of ‘The Vision’ he is very deliberate in setting a tone and atmosphere that
make a prelude to a deeply significant and spiritual experience. In this work of
exceptional gravitas Burns proposes his poetic calling, demonstrating a sense
of his own ability and purpose that sets him far apart even from the bardic
fraternity of the epistles. Through references to rhyme, ploughing and ‘my
bonie Jean’ Burns constructs a persona clearly intended to be understood as his
own. Though initially startled by the appearance of his Muse, typically, when
confronted by a female presence, his brashness quickly reasserts itself:
And such a leg! My bonie Jean
Could only peer it;
Sae straught, sae taper, tight an clean –
Nane else came near it.18
The whole encounter, including the Muse’s revelations, her instructions and
Burns’s implicit acceptance of the commission, makes evident his remarkable
self-confidence. However, the audacity (as some might consider it) of his claim
to be writing in obedience to the commands of Scotland’s presiding poetic
genii, is ingeniously embedded within a rich, rhetorical, sensuous composition
that cannily includes very proper-sounding allusions to his own rusticity and
lowliness:
‘I taught thy manners-painting strains
The loves, the ways of simple swains
Till now, o’er all my wide domains
Thy fame extends;
And some, the pride of Coila’s plains
Become thy friends. [. . .]
Then never murmur nor repine;
Strive in thy humble sphere to shine;
And trust me, not Potosi’s mine,
Nor king’s regard,
Can give a bliss o’ermatching thine,
A rustic Bard. [. . .]’19
Ibid., 116.
Ibid., 120 – 1.
18
19
79
The work may appear contrived to cash in on Burns’s popular image as ploughman-poet/rustic genius, but as the Muse’s theme develops no hint of irony
is permitted to disturb the mood. Rather, the dignity and consequence of
the poet’s status and calling are thoroughly enhanced. In this respect, despite
massive differences in register and subject, ‘The Vision’ discloses the poet’s isolation, his sense of separateness from the mindset of ‘simple swains’, every bit
as much as does ‘Adam Armour’s Prayer’.
Undoubtedly, Burns brought unprecedented sophistication and variety
to composition in standard habbie, exploiting its flexibility to the full. What
more could possibly be achieved by any following poet who chose to employ
it? Would not any work produced inevitably appear imitative of something
Burns had already accomplished? If one explores the Scots poetry produced in
Ulster, however, it becomes clear that new light could indeed brighten an old
window.
James Orr’s handling of standard habbie, which he employed in seven
poems, is more than merely competent. In these works he effortlessly adopts
the stance of a man rooted within his community and closely identified with
it. He evokes its life, acts as its spokesman, and, when appropriate, gently satirises. Linde Lunney of the Royal Irish Academy has written of Orr’s ‘intimately
structured community where everyone is known’, and of his ‘almost mystic
perception of rootedness’.20 It is in the vernacular standard habbie poems
that this inter-connectedness between his life and the lives of his neighbours
becomes most apparent.
With the exception of some months beginning in the autumn of 1798 which
he spent in Philadelphia, James Orr lived the whole of his life (1770 – 1816)
in the village of Ballycarry. The village, in the east Antrim hills, was situated in
a district that had been settled by Scots in the late sixteenth century and the
Scottishness of its language, customs and culture remained evident to observers
more than two hundred years later.21 The Reverend Edward Brice established
Ireland’s first Presbyterian congregation there circa 1613 and by the time of
Orr’s birth Ballycarry was almost exclusively Presbyterian. Literacy was of a
good standard in the area for the Scots had quickly founded a school in the
Linde Lunney, ‘The Nature of the Ulster-Scots Language Community’ in John Erskine
and Gordon Lucy (eds), Cultural Traditions: Varieties of Scottishness (Belfast, 1997),
113 – 27.
21
A. Day, P. McWilliams and N. Dobson, (eds), Parishes of County Antrim 10, 1830 – 1,
1833 – 5, 1839 – 40 (Belfast, 1994), Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland, XXVI.
References to the Scottish speech and cultural traditions of many among the Ulster
population may be found throughout the Memoirs for Antrim and Down.
20
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parish, though Orr’s father, a handloom weaver, personally educated his son
at home. The village economy rested on small farming and the (then) cottagebased processes of the linen industry.
Local tradition holds that during the United Irishmen’s Rebellion of 1798,
all the men of Ballycarry turned out in support.22 While they were no doubt
influenced by the United Irish democratic agenda that had been inspired by
Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, many of the Ballycarry contingent may in the
main have wished to strike a blow against the requirement to pay tithes to
the alien but established Anglican church. Orr’s writing, however, reveals the
genuinely global scope of his own radicalism. It was this that led him to command a troop of Ballycarry men at the rebels’ mustering ground on Donegore
Hill in County Antrim, on June 7, 1798, and it was for his active role in the
failed Rising that Orr was forced to go on the run, eventually as far as America,
until an amnesty permitted his return to Ireland after some months. His relief
at being home again is recorded in a verse epistle to his fellow poet, Samuel
Thomson:
For me, we’ a’ that’s come an’ past,
I’m at my ain fire-side at last,
Fu’ blythe, [. . .]23
Orr settled back into village life, supporting himself by following his father’s
trade as a weaver. While he never married, he was active in the Masonic Lodge,
the local Reading Society and in the writing of verse. As a young man he
had composed political pieces for the United Irish newspaper, The Northern
Star, and while in America he continued to publish. Following his return the
Ballycarry community acknowledged his gifts by according him the status of
village Bard.
If the bardic fraternity in Burns’s locality was a self-regulating, rather exclusive society, in the Ulster of the Long Eighteenth Century the Bard had a
public, quasi-official status. Throughout the Province, from County Down to
Donegal, many village and townland communities honoured certain gifted
individuals with this title. These individuals would employ their poetic skills to
Orr’s Christis Kirk poem ‘Donegore Hill’ presents a different picture, alleging that
some of the men hid themselves to avoid taking part in the Rising.
23
James Orr, The Country Rhymes of James Orr, the Bard of Ballycarry (1770 – 1816), J. R. R.
Adams and Philip Robinson (eds), Volume 2, in The Folk Poets of Ulster (Bangor,
1992), 72.
22
81
entertain, commemorate, and sometimes to castigate. They would comment
on local affairs, but also on national and international events. Many bards, Orr
among them, published their works by raising subscriptions from their friends
and neighbours.
Orr produced poetry in English and in the ‘Braid Scotch’ vernacular.
Much of his work, written from the viewpoint of an ‘insider’, celebrates life
in the rural community which he frequently portrays as a sociable, supportive environment. This is particularly true of the seven poems he wrote in
standard habbie. His most well-known work in this stanza is his ode ‘To the
Potatoe’, from which Hewitt included an extract of verses in the anthology
section of Rhyming Weavers. Hewitt’s desire to highlight distinctive regional
culture led him to choose those stanzas which describe the varied, wholesome, local dishes that were created using potatoes. Orr is actually following a
Scots tradition of celebrating regional food which, in the eighteenth century,
stretches back to Fergusson and Ramsay, but in other ways ‘To the Potatoe’
is a work of far greater intricacy than Hewitt’s anthology suggests. It incorporates Orr’s most open and defiant expression of radical sentiments, while
asserting Ireland’s capacity for self-sufficiency and resistance to oppression,
with England specifically portrayed as a bird of prey. It also provides insight
into Orr’s preferred means of challenging injustice: non-violent direct action.
In addition, Orr powerfully evokes community life within the poem, showing that the potato serves as a focus for its every aspect, domestic, social or
labouring:
The weel-pair’t peasants, kempin’, set ye;
The weak wee boys, sho’el, weed, an’ pat ye;
The auld guid men thy apples get ay
Seedlin’s to raise;
An’ on sow’n-seeves the lasses grate ye,
To starch their claes.24
Drawing on his insider’s knowledge, he presents the figures and seasonal
activities he observes, investing them with archetypal or ritualistic qualities.
While keenly aware that the locality represents the nation in microcosm, Orr is
clearly writing as the Bard of Ballycarry, committed to the village community
and sharing in its life.
Ibid., 2.
24
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‘Tea’, a comic monologue, portrays Orr himself in his role as local entertainer, declaiming a mock eulogy in praise of the popular beverage. The piece
is supposedly addressed to a group of friends who have just called and are now
waiting for the kettle to boil. With tongue firmly in cheek he depicts himself
as a ‘rude’ rhymer and his audience as habituated to ‘strains sublime’.
Once the guests are settled comfortably Orr extols tea’s virtues, in a series
of humorous cameos from which its importance to rural life may be inferred.25
It has intrinsically soothing properties, effective against ‘weed’ and ‘head-ach’,
but more importantly, a present of tea can deflect a wife’s wrath from her latereturning, ‘sot’ of a husband. At this point in his narrative, in an effortless
transition to mock heroic mode, Orr vigorously denounces the secretive, selfish streak which love of the beverage can develop in a wife:
But blast the smuggler, fause an’ fell,
Wha brews’t in tinfu’s by hersel;
An, bribes the sma-craft no to tell
Their drudgin’ daddy;
Deel nor he’d ay bounce in, pell-mell,
Just when ’tis ready.26
The quotation provides an example of Orr’s poetic craftsmanship in which he
speedily sketches a minor domestic crisis, exhibiting a dry (bachelor’s) cynicism regarding the marital relationship. The alliteration employed in ‘fause
and fell’ augments the melodramatic tone, while the imagery points to a
conspiracy in which the wife is exposed as the corrupter of her innocent children. The ‘echo’ lines, five and six, allow the voice to modulate from that of
the scandalised narrator to the affronted tones of the wife, while the eagerness of the industrious but hoodwinked husband for a reviving cup is vividly
conveyed by the energetic ‘bounce in pell-mell’. As he lampoons the wife’s
selfishness and betrays sympathy for the man’s naivety, Orr is clearly confident of amusing an audience whose sense of humour he understands and
endorses.
As the poem develops, the spae wife who reads the tea leaves, the girls who
seek ‘The story o’ their future match’, the gossips who gather round ‘the auld
delft nipple’ to savage the neighbours, the youth ‘tortur’d’ by some ‘slee jilt’
are presented in turn and affectionately mocked. While irony is undoubtedly
D. H. Akenson and W. H. Crawford, James Orr, Bard of Ballycarry (P.R.O.N.I., 1977), 60.
Orr, The Country Rhymes of James Orr, 5..
25
26
83
present, its purpose is to delight the audience as they recognise themselves
and their neighbours. No shock, disgust or offence is intended.
Several of Orr’s standard habbie poems adopt the format of verse epistles
within which he continues to give prominence to conviviality and friendship
in a community context. The verse epistle addressed to Thaunie, a talented
local blind fiddler, allows him, mindful of his bardic role, to honour individuals who played an important part in village life, in Thaunie’s case as a musician
and story-teller:
Frae ilka neuk the spunkies stauncher
To hear your stories;
The roof re-echoes ev’ry nicher,
An’ every chorus.
Orr records the poor’s capacity to enjoy themselves with unsophisticated
but lively pleasures that can briefly dispel the hardships and poverty of rural
life:
Let us be tir’d or barley-sick,
Or crav’d for debts, wad cowe auld Nick, [. . .]
Ae flourish O’ your fiddle-stick,
Sen’s care to Cloutie.27
The poem is of particular interest in that it provides a clear example of the
extraordinary oppositions, the sensitivity and bluntness, that are characteristic
of the Ulster-Scots psyche. Thus Orr can address, without a hint of patronising, Thaunie’s blindness, praising his fine ‘bairntime’ and his canny choice of
an exceptionally attractive wife, despite his regrettable inability to see her. In
the next breath, however, he comically deplores the ‘jads as gruesome as my
grannie / Thraun reestet deels’ that are inexplicably courted by many ‘seein’
chiels’.
In addition to his musical skills, Thaunie the fiddler excelled in theological
debate as is made clear through the poem’s reference to the ‘New Licht’ controversy. Another verse epistle, To Mr A********, Carrickfergus also points up
the strong influence of the Kirk in local life. Orr never fell foul of the ‘unco
guid’ as Burns had done, but he did not always welcome the ministrations of
Ibid., 67 – 9.
27
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the covenanting or more conservative Presbyterians. As he recounts with some
engaging self-mockery the details of a long illness he suffered and the various
visitors who arrived to bring him comfort, he does not accuse ‘the grunters,
grave’ of hypocrisy but in some frustration and astonishment he exclaims
against the gloominess of their conversation when they quoted texts ‘again’
me’ or ‘Discours’d O Nick’. Irritated and perplexed he adds, ‘Deel rive their
jaws! What can dispose them to scare the sick?’28 The sudden and appropriate
curse provides a clear example of the natural talent for invective possessed by
most Ulster-Scots speakers.
Orr frequently functioned as the voice of protest on behalf of his community, and thereby on behalf of all the poor. His ‘To a Sparrow’ invites
comparison with Burns’s ‘To A Mouse’ or ‘To a Mountain Daisy’. Its opening
is very similar to that of the former:
Wee, wanton, little thought o’ birdie!
Pert, keen an’ crouse, an’ unco wordie [. . .].29
The poem arose out of an incident in which he observed some boys robbing
the bird’s nest and he muses on a universal lesson that may be drawn from
the experience. His compassion for the creature’s helplessness is as tender as
is Burns’s for the mouse or the daisy, but the Scots bard’s guilt, self-pity and
fearfulness are entirely absent. Orr’s concern for the oppressed and his abhorrence of cruelty are to the fore; his attention is focused on man’s inhumanity
and its effects rather than on his own experience. First, he compares the
sparrow’s fate to that of a poor widow suffering eviction, whom ‘rich, rude
ruffians teaze and taunt’, then to a poor man robbed by violent house breakers of his few possessions scraped up ‘wi’ mickle pains’. His chief concern is
about the devastating effect on the individuals involved and thus on the security and harmony of community life. His moral, underlined with a Biblical
reference, sites true courage alongside compassion for the weak:
Thou needna think this outrage odd,
For man’s to man, like goose an’ tod,
But still the brave will rapine, blood,
An guile bewaur o’
Ibid., 66.
Ibid., 11.
28
29
85
An spare the creature o’ their god,
Tho’ but a sparrow.30
A much more personal work in standard habbie is ‘A Fragment: Of an Epistle
to Mr W. H. D.’ in which Orr begins exploring directly his poetic persona and
reveals his self-doubt. In the ‘Address: To Mr A********, Carrickfergus’, he
had referred self-deprecatingly to his ‘scraps o’ metre’. In ‘A Fragment: Of an
Epistle to Mr W. H. D.’ he goes much further, expressing frustration at what
he considers his inability to match his words to his soaring vision: ‘I see an feel!
But canna sing’. As he discusses the types of poetry at which he would wish
to excel he demonstrates a keen appreciation of each genre named: sensuous
nature poetry, patriotic verse and ‘manners-painting rhymes’, an overt allusion
to Burns’s ‘The Vision’. A restrained but lyrical opposition, expressed in the
third person and thereby avoiding the impression of self-pity, articulates the
conflict Orr senses between his achievement and his desires: ‘The cuckoo sings
obscurely low / The lark aspires’. The poem is indeed a fragment and remained
undeveloped, but perhaps here Orr is more disingenuous than he seems, for
despite his expressed dissatisfaction with his own efforts, the poem’s conclusion
appears to privilege verse that arises, as he claims his own does, in an unstudied
way from simple observation combined with an innate passion for rhyming.
He may be hinting that a work such as ‘The Vision’ is rather contrived and
grandiose:
Coy science spurn’d me frae her knee,
An fortune bad my shuttle flee;
But all the while, smit strangely wi’
The love o’ sang,
I rudely rhyme the scenes I see,
Whar’er I gang.31
The effect is to promote and enhance his status as the unpretentious rustic
bard, for in those final lines he cuts a lonely, sensitive, attractive and romantic
figure.
Orr’s standard habbie poems provide revealing insights into northern community life in eighteenth-century Ireland. They also reveal Orr’s adroitness in
developing his role as the Bard of Ballycarry, who celebrates and participates
Ibid., 12.
Ibid., 71.
30
31
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in village life while reserving for himself some private, meditative space. Of
all the vernacular poets discussed here, it is Orr who appears most affirming
of the poet-community relationship and of the community itself, an outcome
that at least in part arises from the semi-official status of the Ulster village
bard. One never doubts, however, that Orr’s commitment to his own people,
‘warts and all’, is genuine and deep-rooted. While never entirely losing the
satirical edge associated with standard habbie, Orr’s essays in this traditional
form represent a welcome, gentle and affectionate modulation of the authorial voice.
University of Glasgow
Dugald Stewart and the Problem of
Teaching Politics in the 1790s1
Michael Brown
I A Conundrum in Correspondence
In the surviving correspondence of Dugald Stewart, Professor of Moral
Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1785 to 1810, there exists
a strange conundrum. It is created by two communications that point
in contradictory directions. The first is an exchange with a friend he first
encountered during the academic year 1771 – 2, which he spent as a student
at the University of Glasgow. The second was generated by a contretemps
between Stewart and a Lord of Session. The puzzle these two bouts of letter writing embody illuminates and complicates our understanding of three
interrelated stories: the political development of Dugald Stewart; the possibilities for free expression in the 1790s; and, finally, the fate of the Scottish
Enlightenment itself.
Six months younger than Stewart, his college friend William Drennan
was a founder member of the United Irishmen.2 While he had avoided direct
involvement in the rising of 1798, he had already stood trial for his radical
opinions in 1794.3 Yet, after the year in Glasgow, Drennan and Stewart clearly
maintained a friendship that involved some sympathy in political opinions. As
early as January 1778, Drennan approvingly recounted to his sister and confidant, Martha McTier of how he found, upon visiting Edinburgh:
Nothing is going on here at present but raising regiments, to be devoted
to destruction in America. Every order of men from the highest to the
I wish to acknowledge the assistance provided by the Irish Research Council for
the Humanities and Social Sciences. Early versions of this paper were delivered
to a Conference on ‘Scotland, Ireland and the Romantic Aesthetic’, University of
Aberdeen, 7 July 2002 and a Conference on ‘Enlightenment, Law and Lawyers:
Scottish Enlightenment Legal Thought and its International Impact’, School of Law,
University of Glasgow, 23 May 2002.
2
On Drennan, see Ian McBride, ‘William Drennan and the Dissenting Tradition’ in David
Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan (eds), The United Irishmen: Republicanism,
Radicalism and Rebellion (Dublin, 1993), 49 – 61.
3
See John Larkin (ed.), The Trial of William Drennan (Dublin, 1991).
1
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Michael Brown
lowest are emptying their pockets (and what more could be asked from
Scotchmen?) in the support of the war . . . The greatest part of the
professors have given ten guineas, Stewart but two.4
While the relationship was to be sporadic, it was no less intimate for that. On
22 November 1813, three years after Stewart had retired from active teaching,
his second wife Helen D’Arcy Stewart wrote from Kinneil House to Drennan
of how Stewart had an ‘unconquerable’ dislike for correspondence, and ‘wears
himself out with writing . . . [being] constantly occupied with the second
volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind ’, which appeared the next year.5
None the less, she assured Drennan that ‘no day passes in which he does not
reproach himself bitterly for his silence to you’.6 D’Arcy Stewart told Drennan
of how ‘we are always planning a visit to Ireland’ (a journey they never took)
and that ‘all that you did and said and thought at Glasgow together will serve
us with this evening’s chat’.7 However, this was far more than a mere reminiscence. That D’Arcy Stewart assured Drennan that Stewart recalled a meeting
of minds, as well as more traditional student pleasures, is indicative of Stewart’s
attitude.
A letter from 31 December 1807 furthers this picture of fraternal feeling.
D’Arcy Stewart wrote to Drennan of how ‘it is above seventeen years since I
became his [Dugald’s] wife, and your name, your verses, all you ever did or
said, I feel as well acquainted with as if you were my brother’.8 Stewart himself
reiterated his wife’s sentiments in a letter dated 20 September 1808, telling
of how ‘we have a project of proceeding as far as Port Patrick in the hope of
meeting with you and Mrs Drennan and of spending some days emptying our
minds to each other’.9 In the meantime, Stewart offered to send Drennan ‘a
collection of all that I have hitherto published and shall be anxious to know
how far our philosophical views coincide’.10 More remarkable still was D’Arcy
Stewart’s recollection in December 1807 of how it was ‘with . . . anxiety and
agony we at one time felt for your much-injured country . . . It was one of
William Drennan to Martha McTier, 20 January 1778 in Jean Agnew (ed.), The DrennanMcTier Letters: Volume I: 1776 – 1793 (Dublin, 1998), 32 – 3.
5
Helen D’Arcy Stewart to William Drennan, Kinneil House, 22 November 1813, EUL,
Dc.1.100 f1A.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid., f2A.
8
Helen D’Arcy Stewart to William Drennan, 31? December 1807?, EUL, Dc.1.100,
f3B.
9
Dugald Stewart to William Drennan, EUL, Dc.1.100, f6B.
10
Ibid., f7A.
4
89
the strongest claims on Mr Stewart’s heart that your happiness was involved in
its welfare or misery’.11
It is this expression of sympathy with the fate of the United Irish rebellion and its actors that stands in apparent contrast to a second brief exchange
of letters which Stewart conducted in 1794 with a Lord of Session, William
Craig. Craig was an occasional contributor to both the Mirror and the Lounger
periodicals and a regular visitor to the Stewart household. Stewart had asked
Craig to investigate a new coolness in the manner of a colleague on the bench,
Alexander Abercromby. Craig reported back on that the professor’s suspicions
were well founded:
Without being able to give precisely the words of the gentleman whom
it was your wish I speak to, I find his impressions are of the following
nature. That when he first read a certain chapter in a certain book,
he considered it as an attempt to introduce the opinions of some late
philosophers into Great Britain, and what was still more, to point a
practical application of them to the political institutions and government of this country. That even allowing the principles in that chapter,
however erroneous, to be written with the most innocent intention at
the time, that after the massacres in France, and the dreadful actings
such principles had produced, and after the consequences of them had
been expressed in such horrible and bloody characters, it could not only
not be innocent to maintain those opinions, but that that conduct could
not be innocent which did not disavow them; and endeavour to correct
their pernicious operation in the most explicit manner . . . Having
read the chapter alluded to, after the massacre of Paris, he flattered himself, from the high opinion he entertained of your character, that you
would embrace the earliest opportunity of retracting in an open and
manly manner, every sentiment you had ever entertained, and every
word you had ever uttered, in favour of doctrines which had led to so
giant a mischief; and above all, he trusted that you would have exerted
all your talents, to impress upon the minds of our youth, a love and a
veneration for the British constitution, upon the preservation of which
it is now too evident, that not the public welfare alone, but the safety
and happiness of every individual in his little domestic circle necessarily depends. Disappointed in those hopes, and knowing with absolute
certainty that there exists at this moment a party among us, who wait
Helen D’Arcy Stewart to William Drennan, 31? Dec. 1807?, EUL, Dc.1.100, f3B.
11
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Michael Brown
only for a favourable opportunity to repeat here the same scenes of horror which have been acted in France, he owns he cannot esteem any
man, be his talents what they may, who in any shape whatever gives the
smallest countenance to opinions which, in these times, and under the
circumstances in which we are now unhappily placed, tend directly to
destroy the peace and happiness of society, and to deprive us of everything that is valuable and dear to us in life.12
In the subsequent literature, Stewart’s desire to placate Abercromby by
allaying his fear that he harboured radical sympathies has been read as tantamount to abject apology for a slight political offence. Thus, for example, in a
highly dismissive passage concerning Stewart, Bruce Lenman has written of
Stewart that,
[d]espite his lack of philosophical originality . . . [he was] a very
important figure, for this eloquent charismatic teacher was not only
the supreme exponent of the Scots’ ‘Common Sense’ school of philosophy stretching back in impeccable social respectability to Thomas
Reid, but also a convinced Whig. If he was the most cautious of Whigs,
capable of a cringing apology to a Noble Lord for having inadvertently mentioned an infidel French philosopher like Condorcet in one
of his writings without explicitly condemning him, that too merely
enhanced the influence of a man whose books were accepted at once,
in the United States of America as much as in Britain, as an authoritative summary of the philosophical school which had given the lie to
the atheistic Hume.13
So too, for Richard Sher the common sense philosophy Stewart espoused
was of a piece with the turn towards intellectual caution and the end of the
high phase of the Scottish Enlightenment. In the hands of Thomas Reid and
even more glaringly, James Beattie, it was to Sher ‘a sort of Aberdonian aberration’, only gaining social and intellectual respectability with ‘the common
sense revolution of 1785’.14 That year saw the first substantial work by Reid
William Craig to Dugald Stewart, Edinburgh, 15 February 1794, quoted in John Veitch,
‘Memoir of Dugald Stewart’ in William Hamilton (ed.), The Collected Works of Dugald
Stewart (11 vols., Bristol, 1994), x, lxxi – lxxii.
13
Bruce Lenman, Integration, Enlightenment and Industrialisation: Scotland 1746 – 1832
(London, 1981), 110.
14
Richard B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of
12
91
published for more than two decades, the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of
Man, and, crucially, the appointment of Stewart to the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh. Stewart, Sher further asserts, transformed the intellectual
reputation of the school of thought by inculcating a pragmatic acceptance of
the social order and limiting intellectual and cultural investigation. To Sher,
Stewart’s
moral philosophy lectures . . . were explicitly designed to highlight,
clarify, refine and systemise – but not vulgarise – Reid’s complex metaphysical investigations and to render them applicable to the practical
business of life . . . By the time that book [Elements of the Philosophy
of the Human Mind, Volume One] appeared [in 1792] the Edinburgh
intellectual establishment had been won over to the Reid-Stewart camp
– just in time to do battle against the perceived onslaught of French
revolutionary ideas.15
In other words, the progressive liberal Enlightenment Sher depicts within his
book, which treats of the generation from 1745 to 1785, is abandoned with
the rise of the drab common sense philosophy. And it is Stewart’s domestication of Reid’s ‘complex metaphysical investigations’ that prepares the ground
for the historiographical commonplace that Scotland was a stable bastion
of British loyalism in the 1790s.16 In this pessimistic reading, the Scottish
Enlightenment’s final legacy was to import a kind of hard-headed economic
Whiggery to the Liberal party in the early 1800s through the pages of the
Edinburgh Review – a periodical significantly founded, edited, and shaped by
students of Stewart.17
This assessment seems final, setting up Stewart as the harbinger of a pedantic political orthodoxy of British loyalism and anti-French commitment.
Yet in that, it propels the correspondence with Drennan into interpretative
Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1985), 312.
Ibid., 312 – 3.
16
The most influential statement of this thesis is T. M. Devine, ‘The Failure of Radical
Reform in Scotland in the Late Eighteenth Century: The Social and Economic
Context’ in T. M. Devine (ed.), Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, 1700 – 1850
(Edinburgh, 1990), 51 – 64.
17
On this see Donald Winch, ‘The System of the North: Dugald Stewart and his Pupils’
in John Burrow, Stephan Collini and Donald Winch, That Noble Science of Politics:
A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (Cambridge, 1983), 24 – 61; Anand C.
Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment and Early Victorian English Society (London, 1986),
20 – 8.
15
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prominence. Which Stewart was the authentic one – the intellectual radical or the cringing Whig? Or might both these personas be accurate and
authentic? Were Abercromby’s suspicions well founded? And what then does
Stewart’s retreat in the face of criticism reveal about the context in which he
worked?
What is proposed here is three-fold. First of all, this paper will document
the development and trajectory of Stewart’s political development, using his
negotiation of the 1790s as a case study of Enlightenment politics in the decade. This will identify the pressures under which he operated, highlighting how
he responded to the radicalisation of the atmosphere by renegotiating and, on
occasion, recanting some of its beliefs. Secondly, this biography of belief will
highlight how the different modes of communication enabled some vestiges of
radical sympathy to survive despite the necessity of providing a suitably loyal
veneer on political expression. What follows is therefore structured to illustrate
how different modes of communication – the published book, the lecture and
the letter – enabled the articulation of differing political attitudes. Thirdly, and
finally, the case of Stewart will lead to a wider proposition concerning the fate
of the Scottish Enlightenment.
II Who was Dugald Stewart?
The literary flirtation with Condorcet does seem at odds with the characterisation of Stewart that has been handed down to us.18 Born on 22 November
1753, he was educated at the High School in Edinburgh from 176 – 5, before
taking his degree at the city’s university. He also took the opportunity to
attend a course at the University of Glasgow, where he heard the celebrated
Thomas Reid (1710 – 96) discourse on morals. Upon his return to Edinburgh
in the autumn of 1772, Stewart replaced his ailing father in the Mathematics
classroom, showing sufficient aptitude to have the professorship conferred
formally in 1775. In 1778, he was also engaged in teaching moral philosophy
upon the temporary removal of Adam Ferguson and was again seconded to
teach moral philosophy in the 1784 – 5 session. With the resignation of Adam
Ferguson in the early months of 1785, Stewart was installed in the chair.19
The fullest account of Stewart’s life and works is Gordon Macintyre, Dugald Stewart:
The Pride and Ornament of Scotland (Brighton, 2003).
19
This chronology is suggested by the marginalia to Stewart’s copy of Ferguson’s Institutes
of Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1773). These are dated from November 1784. See
EUL JA 4001.
18
93
A successful and popular teacher, Stewart’s class size grew steadily during
his tenure, until his powers waned through old age and ill health.20 Many of
the sons of the gentry were under his direction, including such notables as
Henry Peter, Lord Brougham (1778 – 1868), Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount
Palmerston (1784 – 1865), Lord John Russell (1792 – 1878), Sir Henry PettyFitzmaurice, 3rd Marquis of Lansdowne (1780 – 1863) and the novelist Sir
Walter Scott (1771 – 1832). In this, as Arthur Herman has noted, Stewart was
a central figure in the creation of the British political élite of the early nineteenth century.21
In a series of writings, Stewart expounded a form of ‘common sense’
philosophy. Although he disliked the term, he defined ‘common sense’ as
something which ‘seems nearly equivalent to what we in Scotland call motherwit, that degree of sagacity derived partly from natural constitution, but
chiefly from personal experience, by which one is able to conduct one’s self
with propriety in the affairs of common life’.22 ‘Common sense’, or the ordinary responses of humans to social circumstances, provided people with the
knowledge they needed to live successfully and virtuously. These responses
also gave philosophers the empirical evidence required to reveal the workings of the mind, thereby revealing the ‘science of man’. Stewart argued that
through a process of intensive introspection, the philosopher was able to
determine the essential truths, necessary for the minds of men to operate.
Philosophy only failed in its duty when the philosophical urge to understand
exceeded the boundaries imposed by empirical observation.
Crucially, for Stewart, the world was made up of more than the sum
of individual experiences, leaving mysterious aspects of the workings of
the universe which could only be taken on faith. The danger with this
was that common sense philosophy could be read as an argument for the
unthinking acceptance of the appearance of things. Uncritical in its vulgar
manifestation, common sense philosophy could be used as a social salve, an
intellectual justification of unchanging social hierarchy and an unenlightened defence of popular myths and superstitions. The question remains as
to why the astute and sensitive Stewart mentioned Condorcet? Have we here
See Richard B. Sher, ‘Professors of Virtue, The Social History of the Edinburgh
Moral Philosophy Chair in the Eighteenth Century’ in M.A. Stewart (ed.), Studies in
the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (Oxford, 1990), 123.
21
Arthur Hermann, The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots’ Invention of the Modern World
(London, 2002), 227 – 46.
22
James Bridges, ‘Notes from Mr Stewart’s Lectures on Moral Philosophy read in the
University of Edinburgh’, Winter 1801 – 2, EUL, Dc.8.143, 70.
20
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uncovered something more revealing than a political blunder on the part of
an unworldly academic? It is time to examine the source of Abercromby’s
consternation.
III The Published Works: Stewart as a Conformist
In the Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, the contentions reference to Condorcet’s thought arises in a section of the Elements concerned
with ‘The Use and Abuse of General Principles in Politics’. In treating of
political economy, Stewart attempted to dissuade his readers of a series of
misconceptions concerning its validity as an intellectual discipline. He argued
‘that the object of the economical system ought by no means to be confused
(as I believe it commonly is in this country) with that of Utopian plans
of government, which have, at different times, been offered to the world’.23
It was, he asserted, safely grounded in an understanding of the power of
nature over nurture and in the limitations of human action. Recognising this
refuted
another mistaken idea . . . that it is founded entirely upon theory, and
unsupported by facts. This may be the case with respect to some of
its doctrines; but in general it may be safely affirmed, that they rest
on a broader basis of facts than any other political speculations which
have been yet offered to the world; for they are founded, not on a few
examples collected from the small number of governments of which we
possess an accurate knowledge, but on those laws of human nature, and
those maxims of common sense, which are daily verified in the intercourse of private life.24
Stewart then remarked further that ‘there is yet another mistake (of still
greater consequence than any of those I have mentioned)’. This concerned
the political implications of the economical system. He had already observed
that, unlike the faith in the transforming power granted to education by the
Utopians, the economists realised that education was best suited to reconcil Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind in Hamilton, Works of
Stewart, ii, 232. For an uncontroversial use of Condorcet’s writings in Stewart see
ibid., 473.
24
Ibid., 234.
23
95
ing people to the political system. This helped Stewart defend the economists
from the accusation that ‘it was meant to exhibit a political order, which is
really attainable in the present state of Europe’ and, consequently, that the
economists were covertly forwarding a revolutionary programme.25 In fact,
Stewart protested,
its principles appear highly favourable to the tranquillity of society,
inasmuch as, by inspiring us with a confidence in the triumph which
truth and liberty must infallibly gain in the end over error and injustice,
it has a tendency to discourage every plan of innovation which is to be
supported by violence and bloodshed.26
It was in proof of this position that he quoted a lengthy passage from Condorcet:
‘“If we attack oppressors before we have taught the oppressed,” says one of the
ablest of its present supporters’, which Stewart identified as Condorcet in a
footnote,
we shall risk the loss of liberty, and rouse them to oppress the progress
of reason. History affords proofs of this truth. How often, in spite of
all the efforts of the friends of freedom, has the event of a single battle
reduced nations to the slavery of ages!
And what is the kind of liberty enjoyed by those nations which have
recovered it by force of arms, and not the influence of philosophy? Have
not most of them confounded the forms of republicanism with the
enjoyment of right, and the despotism of numbers with liberty? How
many laws, contrary to the rights of nature, have dishonoured the code
of every people which has recovered its freedom during those ages in
which reason was still in its infancy!
Why not profit by this fatal experience, and wisely wait the progress
of knowledge, in order to obtain freedom more effectual, more substantial and more peaceful? Why pursue it by blood and inevitable
confusion, and trust that to chance which time must certainly, and
without bloodshed, bestow? A fortunate struggle may, indeed, relieve
us of many grievances under which we labour at present; but if we wish
to secure the perfection and permanence of freedom, we must patiently
wait the period when men, emancipated from their prejudices, and
Ibid., 235.
Ibid., 236.
25
26
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guided by philosophy, shall be rendered worthy of liberty, by comprehending its claims.27
Ultimately, Stewart bowed to the pressure somewhat. In the second edition
of the Elements, published in 1802, the offending passage was reprinted; yet
it had appended to it a footnote in which Stewart distanced himself from
Condorcet by reiterating the central plank of his defence in the correspondence with Craig:
To some of my readers it may appear trifling to remark, that in availing
myself of an occasional coincidence of sentiment with a contemporary author, I would not be understood to become responsible for the
consistency of his personal conduct with his philosophical principles,
nor to subscribe to any one of his opinions, but those which I have
expressed my assent by incorporating them with my own composition.28
Despite Stewart’s apparent recantation, it should be noted that the tone of
this footnote suggests he still thought Abercromby’s political sensibilities
rather too developed for the full discussion of his reservations to be merited.
In this, he may have had just cause for his views. In Henry Mackenzie’s encomium, read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh shortly after Abercromby’s
death, Mackenzie, himself a cultural advocate for and agent of the Dundas
administration, hinted that the stress of adjudicating over criminal law in a
period of political unrest might have contributed to Abercromby’s untimely
demise:
The anxiety and application he bestowed on the duties of a very laborious
profession might contribute to exhaust the strength of his constitution;
and if mental affections are to be allowed such force, the uneasiness
which for some years he experienced on the subject of public affairs, and
the political state of his country, might impair and weaken his health
and spirits. Deeply impressed himself with the excellence of the British
constitution, and of the happiness derived from it, he saw with horror and indignation (at a period considerably earlier than that which
excited the apprehensions of most other people) the efforts of desperate
Ibid., 236 – 7.
Ibid., 237.
27
28
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and designing men to overturn it; he lamented the delusion of those
who were misled to join them; and he trembled for the effects of that
delusion in estimable and benevolent but visionary minds, who might
indulge the pride of political theory and speculation, to the danger, as
he conceived, of all good order and regular government, of all social
happiness and social virtue.29
Into this last category, the ‘benevolent but visionary minds’, Stewart clearly
fell.
Whatever the case of Abercromby’s character, Stewart’s retraction is of a
piece with the trajectory of his other published writings during the decade
of the 1790s. For example, in 1793, in the midst of a period of increasing
political tension in Scotland, Stewart published Outlines of Moral Philosophy, a
synoptic account of his lecture course, highlighting central tenets and enabling
him to expand upon and illustrate those ideas to which the students now had
access. The text provided a standard and authorised account of his philosophical system, a secure and stable foundation for their learning. It also provided
a guarantee to anxious observers, parents or public officials, that the tenets
inculcated in Stewart’s class were at once mundane and politically orthodox.
Those who sought subversion were being told to look elsewhere.30
Yet, intriguingly, Stewart pointedly refused to do anything more than supply the most cursory of headings in his treatment of political philosophy. In
the preface he claimed that this was inspired by his desire to rework the course
by removing politics from the course and expand its treatment into a distinct
course:
The branch of moral philosophy which relates to the principles of politics, being less abstract than the others, I have contented myself with a
simple enumeration of the most important articles treated of in the third
Henry Mackenzie, ‘Account of the Life of Lord Abercromby from the Transactions
of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’, 132 – 3. On Mackenzie’s counter-revolutionary
work for Dundas see David J. Brown, ‘The Government Response to Scottish
Radicalism, 1792 – 1802’ in Harris (ed.), Scotland in the Age of the French Revolution
(Edinburgh, 2005), 104; Andrew Noble and Patrick Scott Hogg (eds), The Canongate
Burns: The Complete Poms and Songs of Robert Burns (Edinburgh, 2001), xlviii – l.
30
This is in line with my assessment of the series of public lectures Stewart delivered
to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the Scottish literati, Adam Smith, Thomas
Reid and William Robertson, as a defence of his moral philosophy course. See
Michael Brown, ‘Creating the Canon: Dugald Stewart’s Construction of the Scottish
Enlightenment’, History of Universities, xvi/i (2000), 135 – 54.
29
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part of my course. It is scarcely necessary for me to mention that, in this
enumeration, I have not aimed at anything approaching to systematical
arrangement; and that, in illustrating the titles it contains, I am obliged,
by the term prescribed to my academical labours, to confine myself to
very general sketches. As soon as my other engagements allow me sufficient leisure for such an undertaking, I shall attempt a separate course
of lectures on this very extensive and difficult topic.31
The suspicion remains, however, that the decision to leave the political section
of the Outlines as perfunctory as possible was also politically expedient given
the trouble he was in over his reference to Condorcet a year earlier.32 This suspicion gains weight from the evidence concerning how Stewart updated the
Outlines in 1801. This chore was ostensibly undertaken in the light of his decision finally to offer a distinct course on political economy, separate from moral
philosophy, in the autumn of 1800. In a postscript to the preface added to the
1801 edition he revealed his relief at having finally made good his promise of
eight years previous. ‘Having of late’, he remarked,
carried into execution (at least in part) the design announced in the
foregoing preface, by way of an annual course in political economy, I
have omitted, in this edition of my Outlines, the articles which I formerly enumerated under that general title; substituting in their stead a
few others, calculated to illustrate the peculiar and intimate connection
between this department of politics and the more appropriate objects
of ethics. The observations which these articles are meant to introduce
may be useful, at the same time, in preparing the minds of students for
disquisitions, the details of which can scarcely appear to appear uninviting to those who are not aware of the important conclusions to which
they are subservient.33
Yet, despite this appeal to pedagogy to justify his actions, Stewart made significant alterations in the positive content of the course that went beyond
the removal of the material pertinent to the political economy course. The
Dugald Stewart, Outlines of Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1793), vii.
This is further confirmed if we credit Anand Chitnis’s observation that, ‘after 1790,
Stewart always read his lectures from a script rather than extempore from notes so
as to minimise the political risks he ran’ (Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment and Early
Victorian English Society, 25)..
33
Dugald Stewart, Outlines of Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1801), viii – ix.
31
32
99
headings that the Outlines offered under the rubric of political philosophy
were now increasingly historical in their content. Instead of the sections ‘of
population’, ‘of national wealth’ and ‘of the instruction of the lower orders and
of the prevention and punishment of crimes’, Stewart now discoursed under
rubric like ‘the writings of Grotius and his successors on natural jurisprudence
and their influence in suggesting the modern speculations concerning political
economy’, and ‘the connection between just views of political economy and
the intellectual and moral improvement of mankind’.34
This tendency to place more emphasis on the historical development of
political thinking would appear to be of a piece with Stewart’s work on the
series of biographies of Scottish literati, which he undertook from 1793 to
1802; with the greatly de-politicised biography of Thomas Reid coming out
in that last year. As Paul Wood has detailed, Reid was therein portrayed as an
a-political philosopher; self-consciously withdrawn from the cut and thrust of
active life.35 Stewart himself made the connection between this image of the
scholarly don and the political heat of the period in which the portrait was
drawn. ‘The life of which I am now to present to the Royal Society a short
account’, Stewart opined,
although it fixes an era in the history of modern philosophy, was
uncommonly barren of those incidents which furnish materials for a
biography. It was spent in the obscurity of a learned retreat, remote
from the pursuits of ambition and with little solicitude about literary fame, – unembellished even by that epistolary intercourse with the
world, which has formed the relaxation of many studious men, and
in which they have themselves transmitted to posterity the most faithful and pleasing portraits of their own characters. After the agitation,
however, of the political convulsions, which Europe has witnessed for
a course of years, the simple record of such a life may derive an interest
even from its uniformity, and, when contrasted with the events of the
passing scene, may lead the thoughts to some views of human nature,
on which it is not ungrateful to repose.36
Dugald Stewart, Outlines of Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1793), 300; Dugald Stewart,
Outlines of Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1801), 322.
35
Paul Wood, ‘The Hagiography of Common Sense: Dugald Stewart’s Account of the Life
and Writings of Thomas Reid’ in A. J. Holland (ed.), Philosophy, Its History and Historiography
(Lancaster, 1983), 305 – 22.
36
Dugald Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid in Hamilton, Works of
Stewart, x, 245.
34
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Yet, for all that the passage brought to mind an ivory-tower academic, unsullied
by the political realities beyond, when it came to the classes Stewart taught, the
environment he here eschewed infiltrated and informed his work as a teacher
in interesting ways. In particular, he was to use the occasional aspect of the lecture as a cover to disseminate more radical ideas than he could safely espouse
in print.
IV The Lectures: Stewart as a Subversive
To map the evolution of Stewart’s political understanding is a complex task.
Unfortunately, his son, Colonel Matthew Stewart, significantly hampered us
by destroying many of Stewart’s private papers. Included in the blaze was ‘The
Philosophy of Man as a Member of a Political Association (Incomplete)’.37 One
can only speculate as to the contents of this text, and the intentions of his son
in deciding upon this act of destruction. According to Matthew Stewart, the
motives were pecuniary:
Finding myself getting on in life, and despairing of finding a sale for it
at its real value, I have destroyed the whole of it. To this step I was much
induced by finding my locks repeatedly picked during my absence from
home, some of my papers carried off, and some of the others evidently
read, if not copied from, by persons of whom I could procure no trace,
and in the pursuit or conviction of whom, I could never obtain any
efficient assistance from the judicial functionaries.38
It may be to over-interpret Colonel Stewart’s actions to suggest that this passage also suggests other possible motivations. He might have been prompted
to destroy the documents for fear that their content might prove deleterious to his father’s reputation. Fear of their unauthorised publication certainly
surfaces in his explanation.39 Equally, mental instability may have played a
Notes and Queries, xi (1855), 261. Also put to the flame were Stewart’s most complete
manuscript of the lectures on political economy and ‘one hundred and seventy pages
of the continuation of the Dissertation prefixed to the Encyclopædia Britannica ’ (Ibid.,
261).
38
Ibid., 261. In a footnote to this passage added by the recipient Mr Henry Foss observed
that ‘I believe there was not any foundation for the Colonel’s suspicions respecting
his locks having been picked’ (Ibid., 261).
39
Ironically, Dugald Stewart bemoaned Adam Smith’s destruction of his own papers.
He argued this act constituted an ‘irreparable injury to letters’ motivated by ‘an
37
101
part.40 His fear that his house was being broken into by government authorities suggests that paranoia was overcoming common sense.41
Despite the missing documents, two things help us in our attempts to
uncover Stewart’s political affiliations. First, as part of his teaching of moral
philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, he concluded his course with a
consideration of political philosophy. Secondly, the attempt to puzzle out the
narrative of Stewart’s teachings is aided by the survival of a number of the
notebooks students transcribed in his class, which date from throughout his
period in the chair.
The earliest of the notebooks dates from the year that Stewart first replaced
Adam Ferguson in the task of moral philosopher. Across the course of the
academic year 1778 – 9, Stewart drew heavily on his predecessor’s lectures, the
headings of which Ferguson had published in 1773 as the Institutes of Moral
Philosophy.42 Stewart’s copy of this text includes a minimal amount of marginalia from the 1784 session, but its content – dates of lectures, emendations to the
phrasing and the occasional additional topic heading, all indicate that Stewart
was grounding his course in that of Ferguson.43 Stewart’s treatment of politics
offered a scheme which ran from jurisprudence, through property, contracts,
domestic slavery, laws of defence, casuistry, politics, population, riches, political law, liberty, penal law and national happiness. Similarly, Ferguson offered
a diet that moved from jurisprudence through property, contracts, defence,
casuistry, politics and national happiness.
Notably, while those headings used solely by Stewart – domestic slavery,
liberty and penal law – are all suggestive of a more radical political flavour, he
left to one side such offerings as ‘the distribution of office fitted to the constitution’ and the ‘importance of political institutions’ as well as shortening
excessive solicitude in the author about his posthumous reputation’ (Stewart, Life
of Smith in Hamilton Works of Stewart, x, 74). On Smith’s concern for posterity, see
Donald Winch, Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain,
1750 – 1834 (Cambridge, 1996), 35-56.
40
On Matthew Stewart’s illness see Macintyre, Dugald Stewart, 215 – 16, 230 – 3.
41
Further evidence of Matthew Stewart’s paranoia in this regard can be seen in his
admission that the tenth destroyed item he lists is ‘A work on which I have been
labouring for the last four years and of which I had completed as much as would
have printed 2000 quarto pages. It was very nearly finished; and was in my humble
appreciation of more real literary value than all the rest I have destroyed. I long since
(in consequence of finding my locks picked and my papers read), destroyed all that I
had put on paper on government, legislation and political economy, which were for
many years almost my exclusive study’ (Notes and Queries, xi (1855), 262).
42
Adam Ferguson, Institutes of Moral Philosophy (London, 1994).
43
EUL JA 4001.
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Ferguson’s extensive discussion of virtue and duty under the general heading of
casuistry. The content of Stewart’s meditations was predominately descriptive,
with the mechanics of political association being outlined, and the thinking of
a number of pre-eminent thinkers being summarised.44 Even when it came to
treating of his predecessor’s work, it was the descriptive side of Ferguson, the
reader of travelogues and writer of conjectural history, and not the prescriptive
moralist, who exerted his audience to avoid luxury and celebrated military
valour, Stewart dwelt upon.45
More important for our concerns here are the records the student Josias
Walker kept of Stewart’s sallies into current affairs. Most current of all was the
American crisis, then in progress, and one can only be startled, given the current picture of Stewart’s political hue, to find him vociferous and enthusiastic
about the progress of the rebellion. In a series of digressions from the central
thrust of his text, Stewart became dramatically prescriptive. Under the rubric
of contracts, for example, he noted how: ‘At the origin of political societies, the
people stipulate, on the one hand, to yield obedience to one individual and he
stipulates, on the other, to preserve as far as lies in his power, their rights and
privileges’.46 This led him to assert that
the sovereign, as an individual, in no other instance, possesses a right
to the obedience of his subjects, but only from this, that society has
transferred to him the power competent to them for preserving regularity and order in the state, so that it is absurd to say the right of a
sovereign is at all founded either on original compact or virtual consent.47
In opening up the thorny question of the origin and extent of a sovereign’s
power Stewart was consciously entering a long running debate within political thought. However, this debate had more than theoretical interest. It was
a debate with direct and obvious implications in the wake of both the 1745
Among the central figures from which Stewart drew were Montesquieu and David
Hume.
45
On Ferguson, see amongst much else: Lisa Hill, The Passionate Society: The Social Political
and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson (Dordrecht, 2006); Christopher J. Finlay, ‘Rhetoric
and Citizenship in Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society’, History of
Political Thought, 27 (2006), 27 – 49.
46
Josias Walker, ‘Abbreviations from Lectures on Moral Philosophy, Delivered by Dugald
Stewart, professor of Mathematics, vol. 2, 1778/9’, EUL, Gen.2023, 350 – 1.
47
Ibid., 352.
44
103
Jacobite Rising and the recent convulsions in the colonies.48 That Stewart was
fully aware of the immediate context in which he was speaking was made
apparent when he explained that, to his mind:
when we have a persuasion that the present state of government is inconsistent with the natural liberty of men and that society would be better
by being thrown into anarchy it is not only lawful, but it is incumbent
on us to resist the reigning power. Perhaps the rebellion of our own
American colonies is the only instance where people have taken arms
merely on speculative grounds.49
He ended this observation by stating his optimism in the rationality of political activism. In his view, ‘There is very little danger that men should err on
the side of rebellion without a just cause’.50 He was therefore using the office
Ferguson’s engagement with the American colonists afforded him to support
the revolutionaries.
Stewart did not end his controversial remarks there. Instead he tempted controversy by linking the cause of the American separatists with the actions of the
celebrated parliamentary upheavals of the seventeenth century. He argued that
the historical legitimacy offered to the early events could not be discarded in
casting judgement over the actions of the latter. However, in doing so, Stewart
apparently could not resist courting further outrage, by fusing the Whiggish
article of faith, that 1688 represented a victory for British liberty, with the
far more contentious assertion that the Interregnum period of Cromwellian
dominion was also justifiable in the circumstances. For Stewart, history told
of how, ‘One of our tyrannical monarchs was slain by his subjects; another, on
account of his stretch of power, was deprived of his crown. It is the Revolution
from which we may date the era of British liberty’.51
Stewart elucidated this reading of history by dwelling on the shared thematic of Stuart absolutist pretensions:
During the reign of James I of England, it was a fashionable doctrine to
say that the power of the king was immediately derived from God and
that to God alone he was answerable for the discharge of his duty. This
On the importance of the Jacobite Rising of 1745 in shaping the political views of the
Moderate party see Sher, Church and University, 37 – 44.
49
Walker, ‘Abbreviations, 1778/9’, 353.
50
Ibid., 354.
51
Ibid., 355 – 6.
48
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childish opinion runs through all the writings of that truly contemptible monarch. Such doctrines are too absurd to be believed by any but
those who think that the deity intended that the subjects of a state
should be transferred from king to king as the cattle of a farm from proprietor to proprietor. But it is our fate to live in an age when the rights
of men are better known. To the allowance of resisting despotic kings
we owe our freedom.52
This served not only to fuse 1649 with 1688 but also placed Stewart within
the fold of the Whig party in its resistance to the, albeit by 1778 impotent,
Jacobite threat. Moreover, it linked 1688 to the American colonies’ assertion
that their British liberties were being intruded upon by Westminster’s brand of
parliamentary absolutism. The implication was clear: to resist Stuart claims to
absolute power was to side with the American Revolution.
Instead of the absolute pretensions of either monarch or parliament, Stewart
offered a contractual theory of the state, in which the association of governed
and government served the interest of both parties. Either side could, however, renege on the contract through deserting their responsibilities in favour
of greater power. As these remarks came within a lecture series, Stewart used
the analogy of the teacher-student relationship when trying to explain to his
students the form of enlightened, disinterested leadership he looked for in
politicians. For Stewart, political leadership ‘rather resembles the right of a
tutor to command his pupils for the good of the latter’.53 In the context of the
upheavals in the British Empire, Stewart’s radical vision of the state as a continuing contractual association linked him with rebellion. He was not to shake
off this inclination in the years that followed.
By 1789 – 90, the political ebullience evident in his earlier remarks on
America had given way to apparent enthusiasm for the English constitution.
In the theory of our constitution, the three powers which comprise the
legislature are always supposed different from one another and in constitutional language it is understood that the king may put a negative
upon any bill he thinks proper, but this in practice can’t be done now
where the parliament agrees to or wishes a particular law.54
Ibid., 354 – 5.
Ibid., 353.
54
Anonymous, ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy delivered by Professor Dugald Stewart
Session 1789 – 90’, EUL Gen.1987 – 9, 1989, n.p.
52
53
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Stewart’s political affiliations were by no means so simplistically patriotic
however, and Stewart was faced with the question of how to handle political philosophy in the light of the events across the Channel. By the time he
turned from teaching epistemology and ethics to political philosophy, it was
already early 1790 and the French crisis had taken a distinctly violent turn.
By the spring of 1790 Paris had already seen the October days and the rise of
popular unrest. Within the context of the lecture course, Stewart was far from
wholly complimentary about the British system. He drew a crucial distinction
between the constitution as it was to be understood ideally, and the actuality
of its application. In fact, he identified a crucial development in the eighteenth
century that confused any simple loyalism. As the anonymous student noted:
The above are the notes from Mr Stewart’s lectures in which he gives us
the theoretical view of our constitution to be found in the works of De
Lolme, Blackstone and other speculative politicians, which notes however are not regular or full as these authors have treated the subject at
such length. But the above is only the theory, as it by no means applies
to our government as presently constituted.55
As he then rhetorically inquired: ‘What then do we mean by our constitution,
or is it merely a chimera?’56
In raising this question Stewart was following Hume and Montesquieu,
arguing that the abstract distribution of power was complicated by the empirical evolution of power brokerage. Crucial for Stewart was the rise in the power
exercised by the House of Commons, which had grown dramatically since the
seventeenth century. As he explained to his students:
Our constitution does exist compounded of three parts and these all
influence one another, but this is done in a different manner from
Anonymous, ‘Lectures by Dugald Stewart’, n.p. The reference to De Lolme is to Jean
Louis de Lolme (1740 – 1806), self-proclaimed ‘citizen of Geneva’ (perhaps an echo
of Rousseau) who published Constituion de l’Angleterre ou État du gouvernement anglais
comparé avec la forme républicaine et avec les autres monarchies de l’Europe, translated into
English as Constitution of England: or an Account of the English Government in which it is
Compared both with the Republican Form and the other Monarchies in Europe (1775). Stewart
owned a copy of the 1777 edition. This work is also referenced, and quoted, in Adam
Ferguson’s pamphlet on Price: Remarks on Dr Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil
Liberty &c. (London, 1776), 53 – 4. I would like to thank Dr Seán Patrick Donlan for
this reference.
56
Anonymous, ‘Lectures by Dugald Stewart’, n.p.
55
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that which is described above. They are all connected in the House of
Commons, which is the great theatre of business and where they operate effectively though imperceptibly and silently.57
The division and separation of powers into legislative, judicial and executive
was meaningless when influence over the Commons determined the effective
shape of legislation. Thus, it was incumbent on the other powers to enforce
their will through influence, patronage or, to be even more provocative, corruption:
The king’s influence in this House is supported from the seats in
Parliament, which he has it in his power to bestow from his patronage. The great and wealthy peers of this kingdom have influence here
from their family connections and the patronage which they have,
and the aristocratical [sic.] ideas preferred by many of the members
themselves who are men of great wealth lend also to support the aristocracy.58
This development had undermined the independence of the Commons itself
and had radically altered its internal composition. As Stewart remarked:
The aristocracy, then, is not to be found in this House [of Lords]. Let
us on the other hand attend to the House of Commons. This has also
undergone a very great change since former times. In it are now to be
found the most wealthy subjects and men of the most ancient families.
It consists of men of large fortune and the eldest sons of dukes are
admitted members of it because they in the eye of the law are reckoned
only Commoners. There are also in it a few wealthy merchants, some
aspiring lawyers, some of the younger sons of noble families and a few
men of splendid abilities.59
Stewart was thereby comparing the operation of the constitution with a theoretical ideal, wherein the balance of powers between executive, judiciary and
legislature equated to the offices of monarch, peerage and commoner. But the
actual constitution was subverted by influence and patronage.
Ibid.
Ibid.
59
Ibid.
57
58
107
Faced with external threat, such internal criticism could seem subtly subversive. However, this was not Stewart’s announced intention. In what seems
to be a self-conscious turnabout, he proposed that the rise of the Commons
to political pre-eminence and the concomitant search for influence over that
chamber by the other elements of the constitution was not a negative development. Rather,
This is much more preferable as it prevents those harsh shocks, which
would be the direct consequence of the use of the checks which have
been specified. England has from its insular situation a particular safeguard of her liberties. The executive power has no such strength to
oppress the subject as it would have were it necessary to keep always on
foot large standing armies to defend the nation against foreign enemies.
Our country is chiefly defended by our fleet and the armies therefore
which we keep need be but small.60
Stewart’s conclusion that the rise of the House of Commons to a position of
centrality within the system might protect the state from the kind of shocks
to the system that destroyed their French neighbour may be read in a number
of ways. It may quite simply be an attempt to hide his political loyalties, even
in the classroom. In this, he is laying claim to loyalism, even while undermining its justification. Less suspiciously, we might understand Stewart to have
been arguing in favour of creating a parliamentary system in which all the
interests of the nation come together in a unicameral system and argue their
case, as had occurred in France with the creation of a National Assembly. In
this, the French were more than catching up with British developments; they
were overtaking them, if only in the realm of constitutional theory. Vitally, this
reading precludes the necessity of a revolution in Britain as it had in practice
developed a similar unicameral system. This second reading rests upon Stewart
understanding the British constitution as intrinsically reformist in character. It
sees Stewart less as the advocate of real Whiggery, although his fear of standing armies echoes that political rhetoric, or as a proponent of contractarianism
as he was in 1778; rather he here propounds an gradualist theory of political
change.
Whichever way we read the conclusion of the 1790 lectures, by 1793 the
compromise between French radicalism and British constitutionalism was
no longer available to Stewart. January saw the epochal event of the execu Anonymous, ‘Lectures by Dugald Stewart’, n.p.
60
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tion of Louis XVI, an event that had a seismic effect on public opinion.61
Development in Scotland equally precluded temporising. Harvests had failed
in 1792, as they were to do again in 1795 and 1796, creating the impetus for
a radicalisation of political opinion.62 Even before this, January 1792 saw the
foundation of the London Corresponding Society and, in June of that year,
a wave of popular unrest. This reached its zenith in Edinburgh on 4 – 6 June,
with an extensive riot spawned from celebrations of the King’s birthday. The
crowd targeted the Lord Advocate, Robert Dundas, surrounding his house in
George Square. The discontent spread to Aberdeen, Dundee, Lanark, Peebles
and Perth with effigies of the loathed Dundas being publicly burnt.63 The
reforming movement, the Friends of the People in Scotland, was founded on
26 July 1792. The first National Convention was held in Edinburgh on 11 – 13
December; itself occurring on the cusp of a second wave of unrest which saw
Trees of Liberty planted in Perth, Aberdeen and Dundee, as well as a number
of smaller hamlets and villages. Although the Friends were publicly moderate
in their demands for reform of the voting system, elements were more volatile.
These found expression at the Convention, with the temperamental Thomas
Muir taking the lead. He read out an address from the United Irish movement,
in all probability drafted by Stewart’s college friend, William Drennan. Above
all, the opening paragraph caused consternation:
We [the United Irish movement in Dublin] take the liberty of addressing you in the spirit of civic union, in the fellowship of a just and
common cause. We greatly rejoice that the spirit of freedom moves over
the face of Scotland; that light seems to break from the chaos of her
internal government; and that a country so respectable for attainments
in science, in arts, and in arms, for men of literary eminence, for the
intelligence and morality of her people, now acts from a conviction of
a union between virtue, letters and liberty, and now rises to distinction;
not by a calm, contented, secret wish for a reform in parliament, but
by openly, actively and urgently willing it, with the unity and energy of
John Barrell, Imagining the King’s Death: Figurative Treason, Fantasies of Regicide 1793 – 1796
(Oxford, 2000), assesses the impact of this event in Britain.
62
The best overview of the 1790s political scene in Scotland in print remains Henry
W. Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution (1912; London, 1969). See also, John D.
Brims, ‘The Scottish Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution,
Ph.D. (University of Edinburgh, 1983).
63
On the wave of rioting in Scotland sparked by events in Edinburgh, see Bob Harris,
‘Political Protests in the Year of Liberty, 1792’ in Bob Harris (ed.), Scotland in the Age
of the French Revolution, 49 – 78.
61
109
an embodied nation. We rejoice that you do not consider yourselves as
merged and melted down into another country, but that in this great
national question you are still Scotland – the land where Buchanan
wrote, and Fletcher spoke and Wallace fought.64
In the wake of the Convention, the authorities sanctioned a policing crackdown of which Muir was an early victim. He was arrested on 2 January 1793
and charged with reading this address (a charge he admitted while denying
it was criminal in intent), with making seditious and inflammatory speeches
and with circulating Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (both of which he denied).
A bill favouring County Reform was defeated in the House of Commons
the following month, but this only aided the radical cause. Those who were
sympathetic to reform were forced to accept that the Pittite administration
had little or no desire to meet their demands, and many were driven to the
conclusion that only a more forceful expression of discontent would alter the
government’s mind. By the time of the second National Convention, held in
Edinburgh at the end April 1793, there were some 116 delegates representing twenty-eight towns and villages. There had only been twelve represented
at the first convention. Nor did this radical mobilisation did go unnoticed in
more conservative circles. The foundation of the Friends was countered by the
creation of the Goldsmith Hall Association; an ultra-loyalist organisation, the
declared intention of which was the defence of the established constitution.
The tension was heightened further by the trials of the radicals subsequently known as the ‘Scottish Martyrs’. They began by dealing with Muir,
the case occurring in Edinburgh on 30 and 31 August 1793. Many of the
city’s notables expressed serious reservations concerning the trial’s procedure.
Lord Cockburn, for example, remarked ‘this is one of the cases the memory whereof never perisheth. History cannot let its injustice alone’.65 But
despite these sentiments, Muir was found guilty on all counts and sentenced
to transportation for fourteen years.66 Further trials followed in September
[William Drennan], ‘Address from the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin, 1792’
in Elaine McFarland, Ireland and Scotland in the Age of Revolution (Edinburgh, 1994),
248. The full text is reproduced in Ibid., 248 – 52. On the response to this address
and the manner in which it opened fissures over the nationalist-unionist divide
within the reform movement, see John D. Brims, ‘The Scottish “Jacobins”, Scottish
Nationalism and the British Union’ in Roger A. Mason (ed.), Scotland and England,
1286 – 1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), 247 – 65.
65
Henry Cockburn quoted by Ken Logue, ‘Thomas Muir’ in Gordon Menzies (ed.),
History is my Witness (London, 1976), 25.
66
On Muir’s highly picaresque subsequent career see Marjorie Masson and J. F. Jameson,
64
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1793 and into January and March of 1794, with Thomas F. Palmer, William
Skirving, and the English representatives at the Scottish convention, Maurice
Margarot and Joseph Gerrald, all following Muir into banishment. These
trials marked a tragic watershed in the development of radical politics in
Scotland.67
In the lectures of the academic session 1793 – 4, Stewart abandoned the
distinction between theory and practice that characterised his earlier reflections. The student Archibald Bell only recorded a brisk and uncontroversial
analysis of the working of the British constitution (it should be noted that
only in this set of notes was the constitution referred to as British rather than
English).68 Although again acknowledging his debt to Montesquieu, Stewart’s
rhetoric now implied that even a celebrated French thinker, and an enlightened author, thought the British constitution exemplary. It was a model upon
which French politics could and should draw:
Indeed, one is at a loss to discover the tendency and scope of this celebrated author’s [Montesquieu] observations upon the government
of his own country. Sometimes he seems to be actuated by a sincere
admiration and respect for it, acquired probably by early education and
prejudice. And sometimes one would imagine that he meant to suggest
to his countrymen the idea of a better, by his describing many of its
defects, suggesting amendments and contrasting it with the numerous
excellencies of the British constitution. 69
If even the French thought well of the British constitution, the subtext might
read, the British authorities need not fear revolution. In this vein, Stewart
offered an analysis of the French Revolution as a consequence of a specifically
‘The Odyssey of Thomas Muir’, The American Historical Review, xxix (1923), 49 – 72.
As W. Hamish Fraser has written: ‘The authorities’ response was devastatingly harsh.
There was a series of arrests of reformers in the Spring of 1793, and when that failed
to deter continuing demands for reform, leading activists, Muir, [Thomas Fyshe]
Palmer and [William] Skirving, together with London reformers who had ventured
north of the border, [Maurice] Margarot and [Joseph] Gerrald, were despatched to
Australia. The tiny group of insurrectionists around Robert Watt was easily broken
up and imitators were further deterred by his public hanging. The political reform
movement was effectively nipped in the bud’. W. Hamish Fraser, ‘Patterns of Protest’
in T. M. Devine and Rosalind Mitchison (eds), People and Society in Scotland, Volume One:
1760 – 1830 (Edinburgh, 1988), 284 – 5.
68
Arch Bell, ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy delivered in the University of Edinburgh by
Professor Dugald Stewart in the years 1793 – 4’, EUL Dc.4.97, 350.
69
Ibid., 348.
67
111
French variant of absolutist politics confronting French mores of liberality.
‘The authority of the king of France’, he announced, ‘is not restrained by law
more than the most absolute despotism, but merely by the particular customs,
manners, institutions and fortuitous circumstances of the country which form
but a weak bulwark against the encroachments of arbitrary power’.70 Whether
this amounted to an argument for the irrationality of British Jacobinism or
against the state repression of political expression fuelled by a silly fear of revolution is again a matter for interpretation.
The second possibility is given credibility by Stewart’s reaction to the suspension of Habeas Corpus in April and May 1794. In the weeks that the
Habeas Corpus law was being debated, Stewart deferred the normal course of
his observations on the workings of the constitution to reflect upon the importance of that law in sustaining the liberty of the British subject. He saw three
central planks in the constitutional defence of the subject’s happiness: ‘first, the
right of private property, secondly, the right of personal security and thirdly,
the right of personal liberty’.71 Of this final element, he observed that ‘the great
preservative of it in England is the famous Habeas Corpus Act passed in the
31st year of the reign of Charles II’. In a footnote he then cited the equivalent
Scottish legislation, namely, ‘the Act for preventing wrongous imprisonment
. . . 1700 c6’.72
This was not the first time that Stewart had noted the importance of the
law. In 1790, in the midst of the initial crisis created by the French Revolution,
Stewart had pronounced that: ‘The Habeas Corpus Act is most important to
the liberties of England’.73 He even fired a warning shot across the bows of the
political nation, recalling that while:
On great emergencies the Habeas Corpus Act may be suspended, as the
laws of Rome were by the appointment of a dictator; but our constitution is superior to Rome in this respect: that the king’s ministers are
accountable when that Act has been suspended by the sovereign whereas
the Roman dictators were never accountable.74
This rhetorical tactic, celebrating the constitution in a manner that implied the
Ibid., 348.
Ibid., 357.
72
Ibid., 359.
73
Anonymous, ‘Lectures on Moral Philosophy delivered by Professor Dugald Stewart
Session 1789 – 90’, EUL Gen.1987 – 9, 1989, n.p.
74
Ibid.
70
71
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validity of radical opinion, was a central ploy in Stewart’s avoidance of political
censure.
Despite this precedent, the political circumstance at the time of speaking
in 1794 ensured that Stewart was taking a serious risk in placing such importance on the existence of a Habeas Corpus Act. More than that, he did not
limit himself to describing the Act’s operations, quoting Blackstone as he did,
but availed of the moment to offer some observations on its suspension. He
informed his students that:
This act can never be suspended except in cases of the most urgent
necessity by a solemn act of the legislative body, which sometimes, for
a very limited space, permits the executive power to imprison suspected
persons at will, and without assigning any reason for so doing. This
measure is similar to the ‘Senatus consultum ultima necessitatis’ of the
Romans, which preceded the election of a dictator and is adopted with
similar caution.75
These remarks were given a more acceptable gloss when Stewart again cited
Blackstone, this time on the dangers implicit in suspension of the Act. Stewart
noted that ‘“the experiment ought only to be tried,” says Blackstone, “in cases
of extreme emergency, and in these the nation only parts with its liberty for a
while in order to preserve it for ever”.’76
In the eyes of the authorities, however, that emergency was already upon
the state. In October 1795 Treason and Sedition Acts were passed and a further
crackdown on reforming organisations followed. As John Brims has stated:
The prompt and hard-headed response of the authorities, in forcibly dispersing the [British] Convention, arresting its leaders, partly suspending
the operation of the Act anent Wrongous Imprisonment of 1701, and
encouraging the loyalist well-to-do to form Volunteer Companies in
defence of the constitution, produced its intended result. A dispirited,
harassed and apparently divided Scottish radical movement broke up in
disarray. The extension to Scotland of the infamously repressive ‘Two
Acts’ of 1795, which greatly expanded the scope of the treason laws
and placed draconian restrictions on the right of political assembly, was
therefore not only politically unnecessary but also dangerous in that it
Bell, ‘Moral Philosophy’, 360
Ibid., 360.
75
76
113
virtually forced any future revival of radical activity in Scotland to be
directed along revolutionary lines. And so it fell out.77
It was not until 1797 that the government became aware of a renewed threat
of subversion, when they identified the emergence of United Scotsmen.78 Yet,
although tremors from the French Revolution had shaken British politics as far
back as 1789, it was in Ireland that the political ground really shook.
Although the United Irishman had gone underground in the wake of
their suppression in 1794, they had radicalised in the darkness. Re-emerging
into the political daylight on the morning of 23 May 1798, the mail-coaches
running out of Dublin were halted as a signal to countryside cells that the
long-impending rising had begun.79 Although the assault on Dublin was an
aborted failure, the rebellion in the southeast of the country was born vigorous and violent. To British observers it was clear that the United Irish rising
indicated how Jacobinism was rupturing the fabric of loyalism. The bloody
turmoil of the uprising, and the late intervention of a French invasion force,
highlighted the threat Jacobinism posed to the security and prosperity of the
ruling élite, and although the rising was repressed, the impact of that summer
of discontent and disaffection was profound, leading to the collapse of the
Irish executive and the Anglo-Irish Union of 1800.80
Throughout this most tempestuous of periods, a student named J. Small
was attending Stewart’s classes. Small attended three successive sessions, those
of 1796 – 7, 1797 – 8 and 1798 – 9, and kept lengthy notes on what he heard. It
would seem that Stewart was unusually reticent on matters of political import.
The notes under the heading ‘Of the English Constitution’ are extremely short
and record Stewart as observing that: ‘It is unnecessary here to discuss this
subject as it has been treated at so great a length by Montesquieu, Blackstone
Brims, ‘The Scottish “Jacobins”’ in Mason, Scotland and England, 260.
For a brisk assessment of the United Scotsmen, vis-à-vis their Irish counterparts,
see Elaine W. McFarland, ‘Scottish Radicalism in the Late Eighteenth Century: The
Thistle and the Shamrock’ in T. M. Devine and J. R. Young (eds), Eighteenth-Century
Scotland: New Perspectives (East Linton, 1999), 287 – 92.
79
For a recent and comprehensive survey of the event and the scholarship which now
surrounds it, see Thomas Bartlett, David Dickson, Dáire Keogh and Kevin Whelan
(eds), 1798: A Bicentennial Perspective (Dublin, 2003).
80
For two rather different attempts to connect the Anglo-Irish Union of 1800 with the
Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707 see Alexander Murdoch, ‘Henry Dundas, Scotland
and the Union with Ireland, 1792 – 1801’ in Harris (ed.), Scotland in the Age of the French
Revolution, 125 – 39 and Michael Brown, ‘The Injured lady and her British Problem’ in
Michael Brown, Patrick M. Geoghegan and James Kelly (eds), The Irish Act of Union,
1800: Bicentennial Essays (Dublin, 2003), 37 – 49.
77
78
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and De Lolme’. Stewart was thus falling back upon the published authorities,
venturing only to proclaim ‘the English constitution is unquestionably entitled
to a preference to all that have been realised among mankind. It has given birth
to wise systems of political economy’.81
This lacuna fits the pattern of Stewart’s increasing need for caution in
expressing radical ideas. In the most intemperate of political climates, he was
forced into a diplomatic silence, merely pointing to the most orthodox of
authorities before quickly proceeding to the safer ground of political economy.
Indeed, this increase in prudence was implicit in his decision to offer a series
of lectures on political economy in the academic year 1800 – 1, the political
implications of which he explained to his class some three years later. As he
told George Strickland’s class in 1804:
It occurred to me during the political changes in Europe that the lectures in which we are about to be engaged would form a useful addition
to the studies of this place. The subject has for some years engaged a
considerable share of my attention, not only as a branch prescribed to
me by my academical duty, but as being peculiarly adopted to the days
in which we live.82
In the notes taken in the academic session 1801 – 2, James Bridges supplied
further evidence of this trend towards political discretion. Typically, where
Stewart did risk a controversial assertion, he placed it carefully within the
context of a critique of a French thinker. Thus, Stewart assailed Montesquieu
for collapsing the distinction between a limited monarchy and an absolute
one. Organising governments into the categories democracy, aristocracy and
monarchy, rather than Montesquieu’s division into republic, monarchy and
despotism, he remarked: ‘Montesquieu here distinguishes monarchy from
despotism, and the distinction is solid and important. It may, however, bear
dispute whether limited monarchy (which is Montesquieu’s meaning in the
word monarchy) should have a place among the simple forms of government’.83 The consequence of such punctilious rearrangement was dramatic. As
Stewart explained, in his subsequent lectures he ‘shall employ the word monar J. Small, ‘Class of Moral Philosophy, 1796/7, 1797/8, 1798/9’, EUL MS Dc.8.143,
157.
82
George Strickland, ‘Notes on Political Economy from Professor Stewart’s Lectures at
Edinburgh, November 1803 – April 1804’, NLS MS 3771, 4.
83
James Bridges, ‘Notes from Mr Stewart’s Lectures on Moral Philosophy read in the
University of Edinburgh, Winter 1801 – 02’, EUL Dc.8.143, 387.
81
115
chy to express despotic monarchy’.84 He remained, in other words, sympathetic
towards the French Revolution.
Stewart protested, however, that rather than favouring the regicide and
the republic, he supported the mixed constitution that he saw in operation in
Britain, claiming for it ‘a preference over all the governments which have yet
been realised in the history of mankind’.85 His rationale for this assessment
was, paradoxically, offered in an extended criticism of the idea of the division
of powers found in Montesquieu’s celebration of the English constitution. For
Stewart, the constitution was to be celebrated not on theoretical grounds but on
practical ones, for an error ‘seems to arise from too literal an interpretation of
the theory of our government’.86 Indeed, were Montesquieu’s division of powers
fully effective it would have fallen foul of the fate its critics proposed for it:
Several foreign political writers [urge] that this division must be a mere
nullity or that it must expose the political system to perpetual shocks
and convulsions. To those who live under this government and have an
opportunity of seeing the futility of this objection [however] it would
be unnecessary to enter into a formal examination.87
Instead of a formal division of powers, Stewart again suggested that the constitution operated through a system of informal influence upon the House of
Commons:
in the House of Commons, there are individuals of the eldest families in
the country. We there find men who are superior to some of the members of the House of Peers . . . a few of the most eminent merchants, a
few lords, a great many sons and younger brothers of peers, many country gentlemen of independent fortune, a few individuals of splendid
abilities who are introduced through the influence of the king or of the
great families. Thus, the king and the peers must possess a great degree
of indirect influence.88
The double meaning of this defence of patronage and hidden influence was
made immediately clear in a revealing analysis. For Stewart, ‘if . . . the king
Ibid., 387.
Ibid., 416.
86
Ibid., 412.
87
Ibid., 412.
88
Ibid., 415.
84
85
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and peers had no influence over them, the government would be a democracy’.89 Britain therefore was already close to the desired outcome of the French
revolutionary activists.
By this stage, the revolution itself had lost much of its radical impetus and
Britain was readjusting its internal relations in response to the threat posed
by the United Britons in their various manifestations. On 1 January 1801,
the parliamentary unification of Britain and Ireland came into force, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In such a context, this
kind of political analysis, celebrating the English constitution for failing to
live up to its ideals was about as polemical as a public figure such as Stewart
might attempt. However, by the session of 1806 – 7, when John Borthwick was
attending the class and taking copious notes in his untidy hand, Stewart was
apparently feeling more secure in his treatment of politics. Borthwick certainly
believed that his task of transcribing the notes was of value and, significantly,
he drew the reader’s attention in particular to the political observations concluding the course:
I have the vanity to hope that here and there throughout the following
manuscript (especially after page 282) [the section of political society
starts on page 283] many hints at least will be found, which tho’ incompetent to familiarise him with the subject, will afford suggestions for the
establishment of speculations concerning it.90
In this section Stewart provided a series of observations on the peculiar advantages of the English constitution. He once again denied that the English
constitution was non-existent, comparing it to the rules of grammar in the
English language: although the rules might change over time through common usage, this did not imply that there were no rules. Linguistic chaos was as
improbable as political anarchy.
Most substantially, Stewart used this series of lectures to reflect on the
nature of the social stability underpinning the English political system. By
this time, he was sounding increasingly conservative in his treatment of
politics and society. He recognised the importance of rank and station and
contended that ‘that intimate and regular connection which subsists between
the different ranks in society in England constitutes another excellence of
Ibid., 416.
John Borthwick, ‘Notes from a Course of Lectures on Moral Philosophy delivered by
Dugald Stewart’, EUL Gen.843, inside cover.
89
90
117
the constitution’.91 This was more than a sociological observation, for he
pronounced that this social stability was in large part a product of the legal
circumstances surrounding nobility:
As we remarked before, it is only the single representative of a peerage
that is in the eye of the law considered noble. In the course of a few
generations the descendants of the other parts of the family are soon
lost in the body of the people and form a link betwixt these two parts of
the inhabitants. In some other countries all the branches of the family
are supposed noble, which forms an insurmountable barrier between
the two classes.92
Stewart was here critiquing the French system of nobility, and by implication,
pronouncing in favour of the English alternative. Yet, he was also subtly justifying the French Revolution. The nobility there had produced social division
and political disaffection. Though well disguised, there still existed a radical
hue to his thought.
The echo of his youthful enthusiasm was also to be heard in Stewart’s
observation on the legacy that England had granted to its former colonies in
America. ‘Some of the new states beyond the Atlantic’, he remarked, ‘have
shown great wisdom and sagacity in forming their new constitutions. The
legislators have made some good observations on the English constitution
from which they have certainly borrowed a great deal’.93 Here, once again, a
statement apparently in line with orthodox celebration of the English system
might be read differently, offering support to revolutionary ambitions. That
the United States had made actual the ideals of the English constitution was
one of the stock arguments of the defenders of the American Revolution.
Stewart was careful not to leave the matter there, arguing that the English
system was the actualisation of an ideal, for as he extolled it: ‘it is the first
[constitution] which has realised the theoretical government of the most sagacious of the ancient philosophers’.94 He concluded his treatment in a similar
vein, offering a grand peroration on the value of the political system then
found in Britain. ‘It was an observation of Mr Hume fifty years ago’, Stewart
recalled,
Ibid., 438.
Ibid., 438 – 9.
93
Ibid., 339.
94
Ibid., 428 – 9.
91
92
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and we may now repeat it with that confidence that experience warrants,
that the rigours of monarchy, the deceit and oppression of aristocracy,
the tumult and violence of democracy have not been felt, but under the
mild, uniform and equitable act of our great constitutional machine,
learning, arts, and general improvement have astonishingly flourished
and agriculture, commerce and manufacture have been practised and
advanced with unparalleled success.95
It would seem then that Stewart was, over the course of the 1790s, systematically retreating from his youthful enthusiasm for radical politics. It was a stately
withdrawal, temporising and qualifying his opinions, omitting and avoiding
ignitable issues. Even now some of his original attitudes could be found hidden in the thicket of orthodox opinion. The advocate of regicide in the 1770s
and the sympathiser of the French Revolution in the 1790s, had, by the early
1800s, become an able defender of the status quo, a soft-spoken adherent to
the British system of government.
In this, Stewart would appear to be in line, not with the idea of a stable,
homogenous, and undiluted Scottish loyalty to king and country, but with
Mark Philp’s identification of the frailty of political radicalism.96 This offers
us a reading of an increasingly reactionary Stewart, withdrawing his favour
from the French Revolution as it radicalised, committed regicide and resisted
Britain at war. Yet, even this picture requires revision however, for as Annabel
Patterson has rightly recognised,
people whose lives have been dominated by principle will often, at some
stage, make moves that show them to be captives of self-interest in one
of its most naked forms . . . But imperfect agents of principle do not
render principle itself non-existent or nonviable. On the contrary, their
behaviour tends to clarify principle’s longevity and rigour.97
So it is with Stewart.
Ibid., 441 – 2.
Mark Philp, ‘The Fragmented Ideology of Reform’ in idem (ed.), The French Revolution
and British Popular Politics (Cambridge, 1991), 50 – 78.
97
Annabel Patterson, Nobody’s Perfect: A New Whig Interpretation of History (Yale, 2002),
18 – 19.
95
96
119
V The Correspondence: Stewart as a Radical
All this caution was not without its purpose. While as Anand Chitnis recognises, ‘Stewart’s politics were openly Whig’, the expression of this view needed
to be carefully controlled if his more radical instincts were not to lead him into
trouble.98 Indeed, as evidence from the student notebooks from the period
indicates, this caution was not complete, and Stewart occasionally alluded to
his sympathies for the radical cause in the semi-formal environment of the
classroom. This was even more obviously the case when it came to the private
realm of personal correspondence.
This is hinted at in the account we have of Mathew Stewart’s destructive
bonfire of his father’s papers. Among the documents engulfed by the flames
was
an account of the life and writings of Dugald Stewart, together with all
his correspondence. Among others with Madame de Staël, La Fayette,
Jefferson and many other literary and well-known characters, French
and English; with anecdotes from his journals kept during his residence in Paris, before and at the commencement of the Revolution,
and during his visits to that city with Lord Lauderdale, during the Fox
administration.99
As this suggests, Stewart was both in contact with a number of central political
figures in the era, and a witness in the early 1790s to a number of crucial events
in Paris, which he regularly visited during the summer months. For example,
he spent the summer and early autumn of 1789 in Paris, where he kept the
august company of Thomas Jefferson, for Jefferson later reminisced how, ‘it
is now thirty-five years since I had the great pleasure of becoming acquainted
with you in Paris, and since we saw together Louis XVI led in triumph by his
people through the streets of his capital’ – a reference to the October days.100
From Paris, Stewart reported to his Scottish friends on the tempestuous
turn in political events with a mixture of anxiety and enthusiasm.101 On 10
Chitnis, The Scottish Enlightenment and Early Victorian English Society, 23.
Notes and Queries, xi (1855), 261 – 2.
100
Thomas Jefferson to Dugald Stewart, Monticello, 26 April 1824. It would appear that
the two men engaged in a correspondence of some duration, as in Notes and Queries,
ix (1855), his son listed Jefferson among the authors whose letters he had destroyed.
See also Hamilton, Works of Stewart, viii, xi.
101
On this trip see Macintyre, Dugald Stewart, 71 – 4.
98
99
120
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May 1789, he wrote to Archibald Alison, author of the celebrated Essays on the
Nature and Principles of Taste (1790), of his concern at
the injudicious choice which the Tiers Etat have in general made of their
deputies. By far the majority of them are lawyers, who are by no means
respected by the people of rank in this country, and who are certainly
of all men the least qualified for new-modelling a constitution. Besides
these, however, there are a few very respectable men of letters, and a
considerable number of the most enlightened and liberal among the
nobility.102
Ironically, given the trouble mention of the man was later to cause Stewart, he
here told Alison of his regret that ‘the marquis de Condorcet was not returned
by the noblesse, and it is doubtful whether he will be able to obtain a seat at
all’.103
By 27 November 1791 Stewart was informing Alison that ‘the affairs of
France . . . are going on more and more every day to my satisfaction’. He
explained how a peculiarly French set of circumstances had produced the
Revolution, and that it now demanded patience and understanding from
foreign observers. In a passage echoing the theories of Montesquieu, Stewart
relayed to Alison how he believed that
in a country where the manners have been formed under an arbitrary
government, and where some time must elapse before the ideas of the
people are completely changed, I am not certain if it is not fortunate,
on the whole, to secure to the executive power such a weight as may
consolidate the different parts of so vast a system, and may preserve the
people in that tranquillity which is necessary to enable the constitution
to produce its full effects on their industry and their morals.
However, he was still able to assert, in the face of the gathering evidence, that
‘The little disorders which may now and then occur in a country, where things
in general are in so good a train, are of very inconsiderable importance’.104
Dugald Stewart to Archibald Alison, Paris, 10 May 1789 quoted in Veitch, ‘Memoir’,
cxxiv.
103
Ibid., cxxv. Condorcet was successful in his attempt to gain a seat.
104
Dugald Stewart to Archibald Alison, Edinburgh, 27 November 1791, in Veitch,
‘Memoir’, cxxxiii. This might with profit be contrasted with his above-quoted
remarks in the Elements distancing himself from the use of political violence. It
102
121
In January 1793, the same month as Thomas Muir’s arrest and the execution of Louis XVI, Stewart wrote to Alison, congratulating him on the birth
of a son. He admitted that, ‘I don’t know what duties your church imposes
on a godfather, but I promise to do all I can to make him a philosopher and
an economist; and I engage, as soon as he begins to snuff (which I suppose he
will do in a dozen years hence), to make him the present of a very handsome
box which I received lately, with the Rights of Man inscribed on the lid’.105 Just
the month before Stewart wrote these words to Alison, in December 1792,
the trial of Thomas Paine for seditious writings was opened in London.106 In
this context, Stewart’s remark to Alison was a politically dangerous rhetorical
flourish.
War with revolutionary France now loomed, polarising opinion further; a
prospect, Stewart admitted to Alison, in January that left him fearful:
I tremble at the thought of war, because it appears to me to be risking
the prosperity and tranquillity of this country on the throw of a die.
If we engage in it, it will open a new source of political events, the
final issue of which is beyond all calculation; but I think, in general,
we may venture to predict, that it will not be agreeable to the wishes
of those who are most anxious to promote it. Is it not melancholy that
the occurrences of the last twenty years should have taught statesmen
so little wisdom? The infatuation of this part of the country is beyond
all belief. A few weeks have turned the tide most effectually, and all
freedom, both of speech and of the press, is for a time suspended . . .
The late shocking barbarities at Paris have furnished the means of
inflaming the popular passions; but if order were established in that
country, or if the events of the next campaign should be as contrary
to their expectations as those of the last I am afraid to look forward to
the consequences.107
The anxiety that this letter reveals helps us to comprehend the context in which
we must read Stewart’s demure surrender to Abercromby, when challenged
would seem that even in the Elements of 1792, although it got him in trouble, Stewart
was differentiating between his private opinions and his public expressions.
105
Dugald Stewart to Archibald Alison, January 1793, in Veitch, ‘Memoir’, cxxxv.
106
An account of the trial and the political pressure on Paine that prompted his
embarkation to France can be found in John Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life
(London, 1995), 334 – 48.
107
Dugald Stewart to Archibald Alison, Paris, January 1793, in Veitch, ‘Memoir’, cxxxvi.
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over his citation of Condorcet.108 The political circumstances were rapidly conspiring to make even the slightest whisper of political disaffection the cause
of profound suspicion. In that light, what is striking about Stewart’s reply to
Craig’s missive is less the tactical retreat, which has resulted in the caricature
of Stewart as a ‘cringing’ Whig, than the way in which the letter was cast so as
to offer a wary defence of his political probity. Writing from Stewartfield, he
began with a guarded mea culpa:
That I differed widely from some of my friends, in rejoicing at the prospect of an extension of our own political happiness to other nations, I
am not ashamed to acknowledge; but the chapter your Lordship alludes
to bears ample testimony in my favour, that even in the most despotic
governments in Europe, I was aware of the mischiefs to be apprehended
from the spirit of innovation and from sudden changes in established
institutions.109
Stewart’s admission of support for the early days of the French Revolution was
cleverly constructed to inoculate him from the charge of political heresy, for
even Henry Dundas had welcomed the onset of turmoil in what was, after all,
Britain’s traditional enemy.110 Next, Stewart offered a disavowal of Condorcet,
distancing himself from the Frenchman, without however relinquishing the
principles they had both espoused:
I shall ever regret that I dishonoured some of my pages by mentioning
with respect the name of Condorcet; but when my papers were sent to
the press, he was quite unknown in any public capacity, and he enjoyed
the friendship of the most respectable men in Europe. The passage I
Stewart was not alone in worrying about the toxic political atmosphere developing in
Scotland in the 1790s. His colleague at Edinburgh University, Andrew Dalzel, wrote
to William Adam in July 1794 of how, ‘such an infatuation prevails here among most
of those whom one used to look upon as sensible people, that every thing coming
from a member of opposition in parliament though abounding in the most forcible
arguments, is reprobated with a degree of keenness that amounts to absolute frenzy. I
believe the delusion and absurdity of the higher ranks of society here has proceeded
much farther than it has done in England’. Cited in Emma Vincent MacLeod, ‘The
Scottish Opposition Whigs and the French Revolution’ in Harris (ed.), Scotland in the
Age of the French Revolution, 83.
109
Dugald Stewart to William Craig, 20 February 1794, quoted in Veitch, ‘Memoir’,
lxxiii.
110
See Michael Fry, The Dundas Despotism (Edinburgh, 1992), particularly 155 – 206.
108
123
have quoted from him (considered in its reference to the old French
government) breathes a spirit of moderation, which, if it had proceeded
from any other pen, would be read not only with censure, but with high
approbation. It is for this passage alone I am responsible, and not for
anything else in his writings – far less in his subsequent conduct.111
Stewart then referred Craig and Abercromby to the fourth section of his Life
and Writings of Adam Smith, claiming it was inspired by the need ‘to guard
against the possibility of such misapprehension’.112 Therein Stewart had written of how Smith’s ‘doctrine concerning the freedom of trade and of industry
coincides remarkably with that which we find in the writings of the French
economists’.113 At the time of penning this passage, he was concerned with
proving Smith’s originality. Thus he continued:
But it surely cannot be pretended by the warmest admirers of that system, that any one of its numerous expositors has approached to Mr
Smith in the precision and perspicuity with which he has stated it, or
in the scientific and luminous manner in which he has deduced it from
elementary principles. The awkwardness of their technical language,
and the paradoxical form in which they have chosen to present some of
their opinions, are acknowledged even by those who are most willing to
do justice to their merits.114
Now, this assertion helped Stewart give a conservative gloss on his espousal
of ideas associated with the French school, by offering them a stalwart British
comparison.115
Finally, Stewart proclaimed himself to be at the forefront of the counterrevolutionary movement in Britain, claiming the position of prophet of the
disasters emanating in France from the adoption of pernicious ideas. As he
reminded Craig,
Stewart to Craig, 20 February 1794, quoted in Veitch, ‘Memoir’, lxxiv.
Ibid., lxxiii.
113
Dugald Stewart, Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith in Hamilton Works of
Stewart, x, 65.
114
Ibid., 65.
115
The conflict over Smith’s political legacy in the 1790s is treated in Emma Rothschild,
Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment (Cambridge MA, 2002),
52-66, where the conundrum of separating Smith’s concentration on economic
liberty from its concomitant political manifestation is understood to have vexed
interpreters, including Stewart. On Stewart in particular, see ibid., 57 – 9.
111
112
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as to the French philosophers in general, and the tendency of their sceptical doctrines to corrupt the morals, and to poison the happiness of
mankind, your Lordship will do me the justice to acknowledge that I
opposed them with zeal, at a time when the profession of scepticism was
not quite so unfashionable as it is at present. Whoever may be called
upon to retract their former admiration of these principles (which have
indeed led to a giant mischief) I am certainly not among the number . . .
I shall only add, that ever since I was Professor of Moral Philosophy, I
have concluded my course with a set of lectures on the English constitution, the peculiar excellencies of which I have always enlarged upon
them in the warmest and most enthusiastic terms.116
This is disingenuous, at least in relation to the context of the lectures, and in
that it is suggestive of the pressure Abercromby placed upon Stewart. Caution
was required when treating with a man who was increasingly to be understood
as a political opponent.
It is this then that makes sense of our original conundrum. While Stewart
was a fellow traveller with the radical ideas of the 1790s, the political climate
in Scotland was not so conducive to these ideas, leaving him in a very exposed
situation. Only occasionally, in correspondence with trusted confreres such
as Alison or, much later, with William Drennan, might Stewart’s sympathetic
interest in the possibility of political revolution be aired. In effect, the evidence
amassed here questions the traditional picture of Stewart as a cautious and
cringing Whig. Instead, what it finds is a man who was oftentimes forced to
temporise because of the precarious position he held in Scottish intellectual
society. It is certainly true that Stewart was being deceptive in his response to
Alexander Abercromby’s allegations, when he told Craig that:
In treating of this subject [the excellencies of the English constitution], I
have been so uniformly impressed with a sense of the importance of my
situation, that among all the interesting questions which have, during
the last nine years [since 1785], divided our political parties, I have not
introduced the slightest reference to any of them excepting in the single
instance of the African trade, on which I formerly expressed myself with
some warmth; – and even these expressions I dropped from my course,
as soon as it became a matter of public discussion.117
Stewart to Craig, 20 February 1794, quoted in Veitch, ‘Memoir’, lxxiii – lxxiv.
Ibid., lxxiv. This is a reference to the Abolition Movement.
116
117
125
In fact, Stewart was covertly expounding on political developments throughout
his term of office. And, as the letter from Helen D’Arcy Stewart to Drennan
makes plain, when people in the British Isles embarked on revolutionary
action, he was a covert supporter.
When assessing Stewart’s political opinions it is necessary to consistently
distinguish between the public statements of a printed book, the semi-private
utterances of the lecture hall, and the even less guarded reflections found in his
private correspondence. As the correspondence with Drennan and Abercromby
indicates, if Stewart was to negotiate the choppy waters of Scottish political life
in the final decades of the century, he had to remain conscious of and responsive to the demands of his different personae. Identifying the private political
commitments of any figure is nigh on impossible, and with the context of the
revolutionary wars blurring the issue further, prudence should remain a watchword. However, the evidence does suggest that Stewart was not the ‘cautious
Whig’ of Bruce Lenman’s portrayal. Certainly, while Stewart protested that ‘I
have long enjoyed, and that I continue to enjoy, every testimony of approbation which the public can give’, that was not how Lord Cockburn recalled the
situation.118 While admitting that ‘we had wonderfully few proper Jacobins;
that is, persons who seriously wished to introduce a republic in this country,
on the French precedent,’ Cockburn recognised that ‘there were plenty of people who were called Jacobins; because this soon became the common nickname
which was given, not only to those who had admired the dawn of the French
liberation, but to those who were known to have any taste for any internal
reform of our own’.119 Furthermore, ‘such real Whigs were [also] extremely few’
for ‘self-interest had converted some, and terror more’.120 Yet, of these, ‘Stewart
in particular, though too spotless and too retired to be openly denounced, was
an object of secret alarm’.121
VI Conclusions
What then does the case of Dugald Stewart tell us about the wider context in
which he operated? First, the clarity of Stewart’s public fate needs to be tinged
with an awareness that political affiliations did not necessarily dissolve under
Ibid.
Henry Cockburn, Memorials of his Time (Edinburgh, 1971), 80 – 1.
120
Ibid., 83.
121
Ibid., 85.
118
119
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Michael Brown
the psychic pressure of the circumstances of the 1790s. Rather, they oftentimes
went underground, finding expression in less formal and stable landscapes
than that afforded by the print culture of the day. In the case of Stewart we
can clearly document an awareness of the differing possibilities afforded by the
printed book, the semi-formal lecture and private correspondence. What was
acceptable in one format could not be uttered in another. This is what Stewart’s
correspondence with Drennan clearly indicates: a sympathy that chimed with
occasional remarks in the lecture hall could not find its way into print, yet was
expressed in the realm of a private letter.
Secondly, and following on from this first point, it becomes apparent by
looking at Stewart’s case that the limitations inherent in differing modes of
communication in the period impinge on our understanding of the Scottish
Enlightenment and its fate. In as much as the Enlightenment is commensurate
with the free and transparent public expression of ideas – and the unhindered
debate of culture and politics in an accessible public sphere – the Enlightenment
was increasingly undermined by the restrictions placed upon discussion in
the 1790s.122 The desirability of political consensus in opposing the French
Revolution and its ideals imposed a kind of mental censorship upon the expression of political ideas. And when, as was the case with Stewart’s citation of
Condorcet, an author overstepped the mark, social censure (if not formal punishment) followed. The correspondence with Craig thus becomes emblematic
of a collapse in the cultural norms that underpinned the development of the
Scottish Enlightenment in the wake of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. The crisis
of the 1790s, it is here proposed, destroyed the climate of trust that enabled
the culture of unhindered discussion, which was itself intrinsic to the flourishing of the Scottish Enlightenment. So too, counter-intuitively, the exchange
with Drennan supports this thesis, for, set in its proper context, it shows how
private sentiments became increasingly disconnected from public utterances.
And without the ability to argue openly about political life free from the threat
of public punishment or private contempt, the Scottish Enlightenment was
fated to fade. One of the unintended consequences of the crisis of the 1790s,
therefore, was the end of the Scottish Enlightenment.
This Kantian definition of Enlightenment informs the highly influential study, Jürgen
Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, 1992). See also, from a vast literature, James Van Horn
Melton, The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge, 2001).
122
Dissolving the Dream of Empire:
Fratriotism, Boswell, Byron and Moore
Murray Pittock
Both the Scots and the Irish have a long diasporic tradition as soldiers of fortune, Jacobites, servants of empire, economic and forced migrants, merchants
and traders. Despite the absence of a home state of their own in the period
before 1918 (after which, of course, the Irish position altered), both maintained a distinctive sense of a Scottish or Irish self abroad, and particular ways
of performing and promoting the community of such selfhood. Major scholarly attention is now being paid to the distinctiveness of the Scots and Irish in
the British Empire by Scottish and Irish (on the whole not British) historians,
in books such as Michael Fry’s The Scottish Empire (2001), Stephen Howe’s
Ireland and Empire (2002), Kevin Kenny’s Ireland and the British Empire
(2004), and Tom Devine’s Scotland’s Empire (2003), though these studies
focus largely on involvement and participation in empire rather than its role in
beliefs and attitudes. The latter is, by contrast, the subject of this essay. What
was the state of mind in which a separate self was maintained without being
absorbed by the international Britishness of empire? How was Scottishness
or Irishness performed when its existence was a mere matter of geographical
locality, not nationality, when England expected armed forces who were up to
50% Irish and well over 50% Irish and Scottish combined,1 to respond with
common purpose to the military, civil and public service commands of a state
which excluded them in most cases from its very name (usually ‘England’),
while relying on their joint sacrifices to maintain its status and expand its
power? Understanding of the personalities and functionality of the Irish and
Scottish diasporas in the early modern period has (particularly in the Irish
case) a scholarly history behind it, and with regard to Scotland new work is
emerging rapidly: but more could often be said about mentalities, and the culture of diasporic groups, or those who served Empire’s needs abroad.
This is of course a huge field of enquiry, and one which, in the Irish case
in particular, is acknowledged although less often explored in detail: indeed, it
has at times become almost a commonplace. As Terry Eagleton remarks:
Fintan Cullen, ‘Union and display in nineteenth-century Ireland’in Dana Arnold (ed.),
Cultural Identities and the aesthetics of Britishness (Manchester, 2004), 111 – 33 (117 – 18).
1
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Murray Pittock
If the pre-independent Irish took a lively interest in Egypt, India and
Afghanistan,it was not because they could think of no better way of
frittering away their leisure time . . . a society which has suffered
colonization . . . has only to consult its own ‘local’ experience to feel
solidarity.2
Similarly, Tom Bryan in Twa Tribes (2003) argues that ‘Scots . . . might feel
that their own strong cultural sense, along with a troubled history of displacement and emigration, should result in tolerance and mutual respect for
different cultures’.3
It may be objected that these readings are too positive, and too redolent of
liberal wish-fulfilment which seeks postcolonial attitudes avant la lettre in the
participation of the Scots or Irish in the British Empire. Such participation was
often after all enthusiastic enough: from Culloden to Amritsar, Scottish and
Irish officers evinced their share of brutality and contempt for those on whom
they turned their fire. Nor, surely, could it be otherwise when they formed,
as outlined above, such a large proportion for so long of the British Army’s
operational force abroad. Irish songs condemning those who took the ‘Saxon
shilling’ or Scottish songs mocking Black Watch recruiting sergeants for only
managing to enlist ‘forty an twa’ (the Black Watch were the ‘fighting 42nd’,
so the number is a joke as well as a gibe) were at odds with the reality of the
situation. An attempt to retreat to the suggestion that at least Irish Catholics
were different has its own difficulties, both with the significantly Protestant
nature of much developed Irish nationalism up to the death of Parnell, and
also with the need to provide evidence that the operational performance of
Irish Catholic privates and NCOs (and from the 1760s, officers) was markedly
inferior or less enthusiastic in combat against colonial peoples on a consistent
and widespread basis. This is a challenge indeed. The case for a consistent Irish
and Scottish political dissent within the Imperial sphere in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries seems almost impossible to maintain.
And yet, and yet. Eagleton, Bryan and many others are responding to a
real phenomenon: the strong engagement of Irish and Scottish theory and
practice with the dispossessed in the age of Empire. Sometimes some of the
views they held were held also by English radical Whigs, particularly in the
Romantic era: but the strength of the connection of Scottish and Irish figures
with global liberation struggles, and the very distinct talent they were held
Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Oxford, 2000), 48.
Tom Bryan, Twa Tribes: Scots Among the Native Americans (Edinburgh, 2003), 13.
2
3
Dissolving the Dream of Empire
129
to have in sympathetic engagement with native peoples is sufficiently widespread and distinct to make us pause. The idea that Irish or Scots are always of
one mind is an essentialist prejudice which disrupts the possibility of assessing
real phenomena, and one of the most important reasons for studying Ireland
and Scotland together is that similarities of experience have been distorted for
us by competing essentialisms. Scottish Jacobitism before 1750 has tended
to be underestimated because it was defeated, and Britishness triumphed; in
reviewing 1798, the subsequent triumph of Irishness has arguably led to overestimating the support commanded by the Rising, and certainly led to the
distortion of it as a Catholic peasant revolt, just as the ’15 and ’45 are distorted
as Highland clan revolts.
Essentialism of this kind demands that the history of small nations should
be consistent, univocal and reducible to a common denominator. Students
(and indeed sometimes even critics) of Scottish literature can regard texts set
outwith Scotland by Scottish authors as not really Scottish in a way they never
would regard The Plumed Serpent, Hamlet or Robinson Crusoe as un-English.
We should be asking the question why Scotland or Ireland should be required
to express themselves through an essentialist cultural representation of stereotyped aboriginality, and why some of us expect this of small national cultures,
while readily accepting diversity of practice in large ones. Cultural beliefs,
performances and networks are complex things, not shorthand for a universal imagology of small nations as reducible to simple structures, while only
large ones remain diverse. Scotland is no more an egalitarian nation now than
Ireland was thirled to the Gaelic language in 1922: both are flags of convenience for cultural practices which exist and are shared but are not ubiquitous.
Once we can see this clearly, it becomes easier to identify the Scottish and Irish
dissenting tradition in Empire: distinctive in culture, network and expectation, seeing self in the other. That reflection itself is a recognition of something
shared amid much that is different: and such is the nature of culture.
This essay can only offer a beginning in identifying one aspect of this performance of a politically dissonant Irishness or Scottishness abroad: a set of
beliefs widely held among many prominent figures, spread through networks,
and complicit in yet defiant of imperialism.
‘Fratriotism’ is the term adopted here for the adoption of colonized nations
and cultures as a means of expressing reservations concerning the nature and
development of empire. Fratriotism affects not only the British, but also
other empires, for example that of Spain, where many expatriate Scots and
Irish (often identified with Native Americans in British propaganda) took an
130
Murray Pittock
active role in the liberation of Latin America. In the argument which follows,
I will offer some reflections on the nature of this phenomenon, outline the
principle kinds of networks which supported it, and end by examining three
cases in some detail: those of Lord Byron, Thomas Moore and James Boswell.
These three stages will amplify what are taken here to be the deep structures of
the fratriot mindset, and how they communicate themselves as what Robert
Darnton, following Clifford Geertz, termed ‘social dimensions of meaning’.4
Fratriotism is a mindset which arises from conflicting loyalties generated by
inclusion in a state with which one does not fully identify. We think we have
outgrown the eighteenth and nineteenth century history which pandered to
the creation of a national narrative and even mythology, but the tendency to
write political history according to the geography and power structures of our
own day is still strong, as Jeremy Black and others have pointed out.5 Cultural
history has provided space for interpretations of culture which are hybrid, dialogic and complex, and consequently has pushed back the traditional claims
of historiography both with regard to its hierarchy of sources and claims to
objectivity (Chartier, 58 – 61): but problems remain. If we acknowledge culture to be a matter more of deep mental categories than social arrangements,
why do we divorce this from national identities: why are we happier on the
broad historical stage exploring past cultural moments such as episodes of wellpoisoning and cat-killing than examining the performance of Scottishness in
the long eighteenth century? Is it more of a threat? Or is it because nationality
is perceived as a fiction, with its ‘culture . . . a kind of Romantic symbol, as
the infinite takes on a local incarnation’ (Eagleton, 53)? Does the architecture
of theory militate against the differentiation of the particular, or tend to lead
(as with Ireland in Colley’s thesis of Protestant Britishness) to its exclusion?
Whether we overdetermine the past to serve a presentist narrative or revisit it
with irony, it is at least arguable that in neither case are we likely to pay it the
close and defining attention its own sense of itself deserves: and that sense of
self resides in the past’s material, imaginative and in the end active definitions
of its own environment through the cultural performance of that self.
The cultural performances I am identifying are those of writing, speaking,
singing, group dynamics, and engagement with one’s own material culture,
habits and practices and the material culture of others who are viewed as cognate: culture as the ‘determinant’ of communication. In the long eighteenth
century (as indeed at other times), such a view of culture has to embrace
Roger Chartier, Cultural History tr. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford, 1988), 96.
V. Jeremy Black and Donald McRaild, Studying History, 2nd ed., (Basingstoke, 2000).
4
5
131
process as well as particularism, and core to fratriotism as a concept is the
transmutation of patriot discourses from the first to the third person, ‘neither
structure nor event but the incessant conversion of one into the other’. This
is not to essentialize culture as a transmissible product (the means by which it
is converted into the ‘straw man’ of those who want to identify it with ethnic
particularism, at odds with diversity), nor the space in which it occurs, but
national literatures and cultures exist as such in the minds of those who perform them, although the ownership of those performances can be defined in
several ways.6 National cultures in this context are usually either adoptive or
domestic: German national culture often absorbs Swiss-German and Austrian
(and in the earlier nineteenth century, Hungarian) literature and culture, just
as Rousseau is taken as belonging to France: domestic cultures are categorized
by adoptive ones as localist and self-consciously ethnic (once again a means of
marginalizing them by means of essentializing them). They respond in three
main ways: active (national resistance: the Gaelic League in Ireland), defensive
(imperial localism: the locus amoenus of Barrie or the conversion of self to the
tourist gaze (Scott’s Loch Katrine, Moore’s Wicklow) and passive (identity surrender, becoming adopted except in the celebration of very local and particular
processes (not events because of the risk of political inference): childhood,
landscape, even sport. Scotland and Ireland in the long eighteenth century by
and large are locales of defensive cultural performance, though of course with
episodes of armed active resistance.7
Fratriotism is primarily defensive: the performance of nationality displaced
into a reading of the other as the unachievable self; cultural alterity as a response
to political defeat. At times before that defeat was certain, it took a more active
form, as when in 1689 ‘the “Irish papists” in Saint Kitts drove out the English
and handed over the English part of the island to the French’,8 or in the conspiratorial and military politics of the Jacobite era. Later, it took the form of
frequent and sometimes striking demonstrations of sympathy and cultural,
Aletta Biersach, ‘Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond’, in Lynn
Hunt (ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989), 72 – 96 (91). See also, Hunt,
‘Introduction’, 1 – 22 (7). John Smolenski, ‘Introduction’ to Parts I and III, in John
Smolenski and Thomas J. Humphrey (eds), New World Orders: Violence, Sanction and
Authority in the Colonial Americas (Philadelphia, 2005), 7, 131.
7
For Scott and Moore in this context, see Murray Pittock, ‘Scott and the British Tourist’,
in Gerard Carruthers and Alan Rawes (eds), English Romanticism and the Celtic World
(Cambridge, 2003), 151 – 66; also Matthew Campbell, Jeremiah Joseph Callanan and ‘The
Last Home of the Bards’ (Cork, 2004), 4.
8
R. B. MacDowell, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution (Oxford, 1979), 136.
6
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political or even military support for colonized or dispossessed nations seeking
to establish a recovered or fresh autonomy for themselves, a displacement of
Scottishness or Irishness (in the cases under discussion here) from the first to
the third person, the conversion of domestic cultural structures by a process
which domesticated disparate historical events in other national struggles as
reflecting on the performance of self. As such, it could be found in surprising
places. Even the apparently most loyal imperial servants could express it as a
form of double-mindedness, as when General Charles Napier opined ‘We have
no right to seize Sind, yet we shall do so . . . a . . . useful piece of rascality’,
or when Mountstuart Elphinstone, governor of Bombay, commented on the
Indian peasantry’s proverbial lack of honesty by saying that these ‘inoffensive,
amiable people’ are ‘often obliged to resist force with fraud’.9 Whose force
is not stated: it does not need to be, being part of what Napier termed ‘the
usual Anglo-Saxon process of planting civilization by robbery, oppression and
murder’. In similar terms, the Madras Scottish Society linked the plight of the
Indian peasantry to the Highland Clearances.10
The Madras and similar societies played a key role. In order to start to place
fratriotism in a culturally theorized context, the risk of making a list of individual (and perhaps therefore unrepresentative) Irish and Scottish ‘good guys’
is one to be avoided. Thus, although the essay which follows will discuss three
prominent writers, it must be understood that fratriotism was very much a
matter of networks, and I hope to give a sense of this also: for only in this can
its claim to a distinctive existence rely. These networks were of varied kinds.
More than sentimental and not always less than radical, fratriotism depended
on group dynamics as well as notable individual statements and actions. There
is something profound in the collective realization of a language of sympathy
and often of action among self-defining exiled groups: a deep-seated motivation arguably deriving from the position of Scottish and Irish culture in the
British Empire and the need to internalize them to preserve them.
There are perhaps four enabling and indeed interconnected factors in fratriot networks. First and foremost, there is a long tradition of foreign service
by Scottish and (especially after 1691) Irish officers. Leaving aside the fame of
James Francis Keith (1696 – 1758), General Charles O’Donnell, whose Irish
Napier, cited in Richard Holmes, Sahib: The British Soldier in India 1750 – 1914 (London,
2006; 2005), 60; Mountstuart Elphinstone, The History of India: The Hindú and
Mahometan Periods (Allahabad, 1966), 195, 197.
10
H. T. Lambrick, Sir Charles Napier and Sind (Oxford, 1952), 32; Michael Fry, The Scottish
Empire (Edinburgh, 2001), 93.
9
133
officers mourned Keith on the field where they had killed him, Thomas Gordon,
Peter the Great’s admiral, Marshal MacDonald, Duke of Taranto, who served
Napoleon, or even Barclay de Tolley, who masterminded his defeat, there are
many forgotten figures such as the admirals Christopher O’Brien and John
O’Dwyer in Russia, Admiral Lord Daniel O’Kuoney and General William de
Lacy of Spain and General William Graeme of Venice.
Secondly (and this is connected to the first point), Jacobite exiles and their
descendants played a significant role: particularly those who had spent their exile
in Continental Europe rather than the British colonies, where many (though
not all, as Washington’s officers such as Hugh Mercer bore witness) inclined to
the loyalist side in 1776. Jacobite Ireland also had links with radicalism abroad:
as Vincent Morley has shown, Jacobite aisling poetry switches to American subject matter in Ireland by the beginning of the 1780s, while United Irish rhetoric
draws significantly on Jacobitism.11 Many prominent fratriots, such as Boswell,
Elphinstone, Sheridan and Burke had Jacobite connections.
Thirdly, networks between both Scottish and Irish and European culture remained important. Scottish networking and emigration continued in
Continental Europe long after 1707, and not only among Jacobites either: it
is important to recognize this in the context of an emerging orthodoxy which
identifies a direct switch from Europe to the British Empire in the post 1707
Scots diaspora. To take only one example, Adam Armstrong (1762 – 1818),
the grandson of Robert Riccaltoun, early influence on the writings of James
Thomson, emigrated to Russia in the 1780s as tutor to Samuel Greig’s family:
Greig had, along with other Scottish officers, enlisted in the Russian navy in
1764, after the end of the Seven Years’ War, and by 1775 was a Vice-Admiral.
Armstrong’s own son Robert left Russia to study at Edinburgh University, but
then returned to Russia, eventually serving as Lieutenant General and Director
of the St Petersburg Mint. In other words, Scottish European migration and
back-migration continued well into the age of Empire, both for military and
technological reasons: it was a Scottish engineer who oversaw the construction
of Russia’s first armoured ships in the immediate aftermath of the Crimean
War, and many Scots worked for him. It is hard to recover his politics, but
to aid Russia militarily within months of the Crimean War is at the least an
interesting decision.12
David Dobson, Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607 – 1785 (Athens, Georgia
and London, 1994), 120; Vincent Morley, in this volume; Kevin Whelan, Fellowship of
Freedom: The United Irishmen and 1798 (Cork, 1998), 6, 26 – 7.
12
Dmitry Fedosov, The Caledonian Connection (Aberdeen, 1996), 4, 48 – 9, 80.
11
134
Murray Pittock
Douglas Catterall has analysed the way in which ‘Scottishness, in the form
of norms and institutions’ was made ‘portable . . . within the diaspora’ by
marrying ‘enclaves to highly structured kin networks’ and that ‘Scottishness,
in the form of wanting to defend Scotland as a patria’ was widespread:13 there
was, in Steve Murdoch’s words, ‘a genuine conviction that common place or
nation is enough to secure an open or trusting dialogue’.14 The question is,
how far did this state of affairs disappear after 1707 or 1745? Not, perhaps,
as completely as has been supposed. Douglas Hamilton has remarked on the
‘clannishness’ of Scots networks in the Caribbean in the later eighteenth century: the Campbells were a major ‘political force’ in managing Jamaican, as
well as Scottish, politics, and Grenada even boasted a ‘branch of the Beggar’s
Benison’.15 In terms of mentalities and the performance of self (and here we
are back with the Madras Scottish society) one of the most important features
of Scottish experience after 1707 is that Scots were able, even when ‘North
Britain’ dominated as a descriptor of their country at home and ‘England’
prevailed abroad, to be ‘Scottish’, and to organize themselves into formal
and informal groupings which clearly expressed a persisting sense of self and
(however mildly expressed) a dissonance from merging into imperial Britain.
Bluntly, to be ‘Scottish’ outside the British Isles after 1707 was ultimately,
however weakly and defensively, a political act, in that it projected a national
space abroad where there was no national existence at home.
Fourthly, there were intellectual networks. Jane Rendall has pointed out
the systematic adoption of pro-Hindu and pro-nativist attitudes to India by
a group among the lesser figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, including
Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779 – 1859), James Mackintosh (1765 – 1832),
Alexander Hamilton (1762 – 1824) and William Erskine (1773 – 1852), all of
whom ‘had some connexion with the University of Edinburgh’ and were influenced by Dugald Stewart or Alexander Fraser Tytler, son of the Marian patriot
historian William who influenced Boswell.16 Mackintosh and Erskine founded
Douglas Catterall, ‘The Worlds of John Rose: A Northeastern Scot’s Career in the
British Atlantic World, c. 1740 – 1800’ in Angela McCarthy (ed.), A Global Clan:
Scottish Migrant Networks and Identities Since the Eighteenth Century (London and New
York, 2006), 67 – 94 (69); ‘At Home Abroad: Ethnicity and Enclave in the World of
Scots Traders in Northern Europe, c1600 – 1800’, Journal of Early Modern History 854
(2004), 319 – 57 (322, 327, 329, 340, 353).
14
Steve Murdoch, Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern
Europe, 1603 – 1746 (Leiden and Boston, 2006), 83.
15
Douglas J. Hamilton, Scotland, the Caribbean and the Atlantic World 1750 – 1820
(Manchester, 2005), 5, 49, 143.
16
The Marians were historians who favoured Mary Queen of Scots: in doing so,
13
135
the Bombay Literary Society in 1804, and Mackintosh was later responsible
for arranging the settlement of Scots in newly independent Venezuela, where
the existing network consisted of those who had fought for or supplied Bolivar.
Elphinstone became governor of Bombay and ‘maintained the influence of the
Brahmans . . . opposed the general introduction of English . . . opposed direct
Christian teaching’ and ‘argued strongly against . . . annexing Indian states’ to
the extent of being a ‘Hindu supremacist’ (ODNB), as well as looking forward
to the end of Empire.17 Gilbert Elliot was also among the pupils of Stewart who
favoured native Indian ways, and Lord Cochrane, who was Boswell’s cousin,
himself attended Dugald Stewart’s lectures at Edinburgh. Stewart was far more
of a sceptic about empire than other Enlightenment figures such as William
Robertson: indeed Stewart criticized Robertson’s failure to look the atrocities of
empire squarely in the face in a preface to the latter’s Charles V written around
the time that Cochrane was attending Stewart’s lectures.18
Among fratriots, family, Jacobite and intellectual networks intersected and
often complemented each other. Allan MacLean’s ‘Royal Highland Emigrants’
were raised in Canada: as a British unit, they could be a law unto themselves,
and MacLean wore the Jacobite white cockade to lead his men into battle,
and even flaunted it to General Burgoyne’s face.19 MacLean’s nephew Lachlan
Macquarie (1761 – 1824), who fought alongside MacLean (and was also a
friend of Boswell), later befriended the aborigines in New South Wales during
his tenure as governor there from 1810 to 1821, as well as emancipating convicts, most intriguingly perhaps radical transportees from Scotland: ‘Macquarie
freely admitted that he viewed the colony as an asylum, a place of sanctuary or
refuge in which he offered hope to the downtrodden by trying to raise them
from subjection’.20 Brought up in Ireland, Charles Napier’s aunt was Lord
Edward Fitzgerald’s mother; Octavian Hume (who helped to found the Indian
National Congress) was the son of Joseph Hume, a Philhellene radical from
they adopted a quietly jacobitical reading of Scottish history in the older patriot
historiographical tradition, at odds with that of Hume or Robertson, though
Robertson, unlike others such as James Mill, opposed westernization of India: see
Fry, The Scottish Empire, xxii, 89.
17
Jane Rendall, ‘Scottish Orientalism: From Robertson to James Mill’, Historical Journal
25:1 (1982), 43 – 70; Arthur Herman, The Scottish Enlightenment (London, 2003 (2001)),
338.
18
See Dugald Stewart’s introduction to William Robertson, The History of Scotland During
the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI, 18th ed., 2 vols (London, 1809); Donald
Thomas, Cochrane: Britannia’s Sea Wolf (London, 2004; 1978), 76.
19
Mary Beacock Fryer, Allan MacLean: Jacobite General (Toronto, 1987), 150 – 1.
20
John Ritchie, Lachlan Macquarie: A Biography (Melbourne, 1986), 160.
136
Murray Pittock
the 1820s Greek Committee, who ‘urged Britain to give up her colonies’ right
up to his death in 1855.21 In Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie was the grandson of two Jacobite soldiers, and was a friend of the same Joseph Hume, who
wrote him a famous letter in 1834, which looked forward to ‘Canadian rights
independence and freedom from the baneful domination’ of Great Britain.
Mackenzie replied hoping that Canada would be ‘relieved of her shackles’, and
in 1837 led a rising to achieve just this: it was compared by his first biographer
to the Irish Rising of 1798. Mackenzie cited Wallace, Charles Edward Stuart
and Lord Edward Fitzgerald in his rhetoric, and later Kossuth replicated some
of Mackenzie’s tactics in Hungary.22
One of the features associated with fratriotism was what might be called
defensive orientalism, whereby the experiences of the Empire in the east were
described by fratriots in terms that adopted the eastern colonies as versions
of self. This was apparent as early as the Warren Hastings impeachment and
Burke and Sheridan’s growth of interest in ‘the Indian cause’ in the 1780s,
and is found also in Hugh Mulligan’s 1788 collection of poems on Slavery
and Oppression. Sometimes the comparison was specific: ‘I think I can hardly
overrate the malignity of the principles of the Protestant ascendancy, as they
affect Ireland; or of Indianism, as they affect . . . Asia’ as Burke wrote in 1795.
Conor Cruise O’Brien and Luke Gibbons have argued that Edmund Burke’s
passionate interest in Indian (and, indeed, American) affairs was an indirect
means of representing the hidden self, a repressed expression of the Irish cause,
while Fintan O’Toole claims that for both Burke and Sheridan, the importance
of Warren Hastings’ impeachment lay in its status ‘as a great moment in the history of international law’: parity of esteem for the colonial subject was Ireland’s
claim advanced by other means.23 In a retrospect on the Hastings impeachment, Byron recalled in his ‘Monody’ on Sheridan’s death in 1816 how ‘the
loud cry of trampled Hindostan/Arose to heaven in her appeal from Man’,24
and Byron’s own Ostpolitik paralleled the adoption of Easternness by Irish writers seeking a Phoenician origin for the Gael, itself a profoundly distinctive form
of orientalism, an attempt to incorporate the categories of British imperial rep Fry, The Scottish Empire, 127 – 8, 353.
Charles Lindsey, William Lyon Mackenzie (Toronto,1912; 1862), 26 – 7, 36, 212, 263,
290, 399, 445.
23
Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Great Melody (London, 1993; 1992), 322, 356 – 7, 459; Luke
Gibbons, Edmund Burke and Ireland (Cambridge, 2003), 167; Fintan O’Toole, The
Traitor’s Kiss: A Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (New York, 1998; 1997), 230.
24
George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann, 7 vols
(Oxford, 1980-93), IV, no. 295, ll. 41 – 2.
21
22
137
resentation into the Irish formulation of self, and in so doing to repel the sneers
of the British entanglement (e.g. Southey’s comparison of the Irish ‘to African
kings notorious for their savagery’ or the comparison of Catholicism to sati) by
embracing them.25
Defensive Irish orientalism drew on the ‘shared Gaelic culture’ of Ireland and
Scotland, just as the Teutonism which was opposed to Irish ‘Phoenicianism’ in
the 1800s echoed the Germanization of Lowland Scotland by Enlightenment
historiography in the preceding century.26 The Scottish origin myth which saw
the country as descending from Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, was shared
by the Irish, who in the early modern period drew on Scottish patriot historians such as Hector Boece to promote it. Examples of this include Charles
Vallencey’s (b. 1726) argument for the Irish as of Phoenician origin, the analogy of Ireland and Carthage facing imperial Rome/Britain, and texts such as
William Drennan’s Letters of Orellana, an Irish Helot (1785) or the inclusion of
Hindustani music in Edward Bunting’s 1796 General Collection of the Ancient
Irish Music. This kind of interpretation, in decline by the 1830s, survived best
in ‘patriot circles’. Scots (whose origin myth had been exploded in the early
eighteenth century) continued to use this discourse, as the Earl of Buchan did
in 1787, or as Scott did in his analogy between the Afghans and Scots in a
Quarterly Review article of 1816.27 Byron’s dedication of The Corsair (1814) to
Thomas Moore as a patriot clearly alluded to Moore’s forthcoming Lalla Rookh
as an allegory of the Irish situation, while Byron’s own Hebrew Melodies have
been seen as exemplifying a similar trend, as did his paralleling of Scotland and
Albania, and the passages in The Island where he links Eastern and Scottish
patriotism:
Long have I roamed through lands which are not mine,
Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine,
Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep
Tim Fulford, ‘Romanticism and colonialism: races, places, peoples, 1800 – 30’, in Tim
Fulford and Peter Kitson (eds), Romanticism and Colonialism (Cambridge, 1998), 35 – 47
(38).
26
Joep Leerssen, Remembrance and Imagination (Cork, 1996), 91ff; Murray Pittock,
‘Historiography’ in Alexander Broadie (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish
Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2003), 258 – 79.
27
Mary Helen Thuente, The Harp Re-strung: The United Irishmen and the Rise of Irish Literary
Nationalism (New York, 1994), 8, 35, 45; Clare O’Halloran, Golden Ages and Barbarous
Nations: Antiquarian Debate and Cultural Politics in Ireland, c1750 – 1800 (Cork, 2004), 13,
15, 16, 25, 41, 43, 55, 58, 183; The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, 28 vols,
(Edinburgh, 1835/6), XX, 1 – 93 (10).
25
138
Murray Pittock
Jove’s Ida and Olympus crown the deep;
But ‘twas not all long ages’love, nor all
Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall;
The infant rapture still survived the boy,
And Loch-na-gar with Ida look’d o’er Troy,
Mix’d Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount
And Highland linns with Castalie’s clear fount.28
As Stephen Cheeke observes, ‘Scotland won’t go away, especially when Byron
is furthest from its shores’,29 while Andrew Nicholson suggests that in Byron’s
writing ‘Scotland and Greece do not merge, nor do they become interchangeable; they are distinct, and yet the same; we see Scotland in Greece, Greece in
Scotland’.30 In similar vein, Caroline Franklin argues that ‘Byron’s Philhellenist
and proto-Zionist poetry of 1814 – 15 fantasized the idea of the nation by
focussing on dispossessed peoples . . . a new notion of nationalism, arising out
of a reaction to imperialism’.31 Byron himself compared Greece to Scotland as
early as 1809, when he likened both Greeks and Albanians to ‘Scott’s description of Branksome Castle in his lay’ (The Lay of the Last Minstrel ). This was the
culmination of several years of interest in the country in which he had been
bred . In 1807 alone, Byron was reading Macpherson (whom he imitated in his
juvenilia), Burns, Ramsay, Scott and John Home, as well as George Buchanan
and Hector Boece, a voice of the patriot historiographical tradition who had
also been important to Boswell in his own understanding of the performance
of self abroad. In 1808, Byron had the idea of collecting material for a book of
translations from Gaelic.32
Jeffery W. Vail, The Literary Relationship of Lord Byron and Thomas Moore (Baltimore and
London, 2001), 11, 60, 64, 85; see also Byron, Poetical Works, III, Nos 249 – 72, VII,
392; The Island II: XII. For Scotland and Albania, see Lord Byron: Selected Poems, ed.
Susan J. Wolfson and Peter Manning (Harmondsworth, 1996), 131; for a postcolonial
reading of Hebrew Melodies, see Caroline Franklin, ‘ “Some samples of the finest
Orientalism”: Byronic Philhellenism and proto-Zionism at the time of the Congress
of Vienna’, in Fulford and Kitson, Romanticism and Colonialism, 221 – 42 (240 –1).
29
Stephen Cheeke, Byron and Place (Basingstoke, 2003), 36.
30
Andrew Nicholson, ‘Byron and the “Ariosto of the North”’, in Gerry Carruthers and
Alan Rawes (eds), English Romanticism and the Celtic World (Cambridge, 2003), 130 – 50
(133).
31
Franklin in Fulford and Kitson, Romanticism and Colonialism, 240 – 1
32
Lord Byron, The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. Andrew Nicholson (Oxford, 1991), 1,
3; John Galt, The Life of Lord Byron (London, 1830), 11; Marchand Byron: A Biography
(London, 1957) 3 Vols, I, 42; Bernard Beatty, ‘The force of “Celtic memories” in
Byron’s thought’, in Carruthers and Rawes, English Romanticism and the Celtic World,
28
139
Like Boswell before him, Byron loved to dress up, both in local dress and
in the kilt as the dress of liberty, in which cause he wore the Gordon tartan
‘on his first expedition to Greece’. Where Boswell had appeared in public as a
Corsican bandit chieftain, Byron dressed as an Albanian one, and dressed as a
Greek hero for the Greek war,33 visible signs of the eastern-ness of his sympathies, his domestication of the alien, the realization through othering himself
in their garb of his sympathy with nations and nationalism not his own. In
particular, the dress of the ‘chieftain’ adopted by both Boswell and Byron was
arguably a reprise of the iconography of the Jacobite era, celebrated by Byron
in his elegiac aside on the Gordons in ‘Loch na Garr’. The dress of the chieftain was not now a sign of that direct resistance, but of the defensively oriental
strategy of fratriotism. In Canto II of Childe Harolde (1813), the comparison
between the Albanians (particularly the mountain Suliotes) and the Scots is
made explicit, their speech even being compared to Aberdeenshire Scots: the
fact that Alba was a name for Scotland ‘can hardly have escaped Byron’s knowledge’, as Andrew Nicholson remarks. The warsong of the Albanian highlanders
ends ‘Ye mountains, that see us descend to the shore, /Shall view us as victors,
or view us no more !’: its applicability to the Scottish cause was neatly recognized by Scott, whose song of Rory Dall, edited by Flora to seduce Edward
Waverley (1814), concludes ‘Burst the base foreign yoke as your sires did of
yore, /Or die like your sires, and endure it no more’.
In 1825, the Scottish commander Thomas Lord Cochrane, who had
helped the Irish expatriate Bernardo O’Higgins liberate Chile against the
wishes of the British Government, and had subsequently served in the
interests of Peru and Brazil, took up the post of Admiral of Greece at the
invitation of the Greek Committee, which included such supporters as
George Finlay, Thomas Gordon (in 1827 brigadier and director-general of
the Greek army) and Joseph Hume. Finlay had met Byron in Cephalonia
in 1823, and had been with him at Missolonghi. Byron had been recommended to go to Cephalonia by James Hamilton Browne, a Scot ‘dismissed
from service in the Ionian islands because of his Hellenic sympathies’, and
Cephalonia had recently become a refuge for the Albanian Suliotes, whose
‘eastern Scottishness’ was already paradigmatic to Byron. Once there, the
poet became friends with Henry Muir and James Kennedy, and read Scott:
the Resident, with whom Byron also became friends, was at that time none
33 103 – 16 (103).
John Nichol, Byron (London, 1880), 18; Leslie A. Marchand, Byron: A Biography, I: 291,
III: 1078 – 9.
140
Murray Pittock
other than Charles James Napier, whose Colonization (1835) was to attack
British imperial practice very roundly. Byron’s use of eastern experience to
reflect western is of a piece not only in practical terms with the significantly
Scottish network of the Greek Committee and Brigadier Gordon, but also in
imaginative ones with the defensive orientalism already established in Ireland,
which he probably knew of through his friendship with Moore. Byron himself was adopted as an ‘upholder of liberty’ in Bulgaria, Georgia, Norway and
Poland among others.34
As Moore put it in the Preface for Lalla Rookh in his Works, ‘the spirit
that had spoken in the melodies of Ireland soon found itself at home in the
East’, and it was in the east in particular that origin myths and the plight of
the colonized coalesced most readily for Irish writers: Nigel Leask and others have pointed this out in Moore’s case.35 In Lalla Rookh itself, the orient
is combined with the images of Gothic as the native repressed argued for
by Luke Gibbons and others: the Gheber (Catholic) religion of ancient Iran
(=Erin)36 is signified first by the ‘ruins of a strange and awful-looking tower, which seemed old enough to have been the temple of some religion no
longer known, and which spoke the voice of desolation in the midst of all
that bloom and loveliness’ (LR, 143). The landscape is ruined by ‘Bigoted
conquerers’ who have bound the ‘ancient faith in chains’ (LR, 144, 168).
Moore repeatedly uses the term ‘bigot’ to describe the Arab conquerors in
the poem, and indeed invites a double interpretation of it as referring to
Ireland in a footnote. The words ‘saint’, ‘sainted’ and ‘altars’, are used repeatedly of the Iranians whose ‘only spell-word’ (surely an ironically dismissive
reference to supposed Catholic superstition) is ‘Liberty!’ (LR, 170, 173, 205).
The Ghebers’ last stand against the Arabs is on ’that Fiery Mount . . . where
Freedom stood/In her last hold of flame and blood’, a locale which is more
than a little reminiscent of Vinegar Hill in 1798 in the way it is presented and described, just as the torrent among crags in which Hafed and his
patriots fight the Arab invader is set in a landscape which is almost exactly
that of the Jacobite landscape in Chapter 22 of Waverley, published three
years earlier (LR, 185, 227). Moore also seems to echo his own ‘Minstrel
Boy’ and ‘Dear Harp of my Country’ in the references to chains in the poem
Leslie Marchand, Byron, III: 1093, 1102 – 6, 1145; Richard Cardwell (ed.), The Reception
of Byron in Europe, 2 vols, (London and New York: Continuum, 2004), I: 8.
35
Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (London, n.d), x; cited in the text as LR; Nigel Leask,
British Romantic Writers and the East (Cambridge, 1992), 113.
36
Mary Helen Thuente, The Harp Re-strung: The United Irishmen and the Rise of Irish Literary
Nationalism, 188.
34
141
(LR, 168, 217).37 The doomed romance of Hinda and Hafed parallels that of
Moore’s friend Sydney Owenson/MacOwen’s The Missionary, published six
years before, both suggestive of the possibility of hybrid identities between
colonizer and colonized.
Much of the primary research on even the key points of Fratriotism remains
to be carried out. But to take our last case in detail, that of James Boswell, the
primary evidence significantly expands our understanding of the altermentality, the otherness of self preserved and propelled by the fratriot mindset.
Like other figures in this group, Boswell preferred the patriot historiography of
Barbour or Boece to the Enlightenment figures of his own day. His Continental
network was, in addition, very different from his London one. Boswell corresponded poste restante with Andrew Lumisden, the private secretary to James
and later Prince Charles at Rome via the Scots College in Paris, as Jacobite
agents did. Lumisden, who acted as a financial agent for Alexander Runciman,
brought in Scottish paintings through Leghorn, where the British consul, Sir
John Dick, supported Boswell’s efforts to liberate Corsica even against the
express policy of the British government. Sir Alexander Dick, Boswell’s close
friend in Edinburgh had (after declining the Secretaryship to Prince Charles
in 1745) recommended his cousin Lumisden to the post. Lumisden had a
longstanding interest in not only Scottish patriot historiography (including
Anderson, Abercromby, Barbour and Tytler) but also Corsican independence,
to judge from his library.38
Boswell’s 1768 Journal of a Tour famously opens with a quotation from the
Declaration of Arbroath, which was the same passage as had been picked out in
bold type by the Marian Walter Goodall in his 1759 edition of Scotichronicon.39
The stress on ‘libertatem’ was one which belonged not to the Latin of the titlepage alone, but continually echoed through the rest of Boswell’s writing on
Corsica. William Siebenschuh, a leading commentator on Boswell’s Account
of Corsica, not knowing this tradition, rather paradoxically identifies it as a
‘party history’ of pre-Enlightenment days, yet one devoted to Enlightenment
concepts of liberty. In fact, both Boswell’s historiography and his notion of
liberty were traditional ones,40 for Boswell relentlessly highlighted the features of Corsica which implicitly reflected on Scotland (and in A North Briton
The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore (London and New York, 1891), 225, 235.
National Library of Scotland MSS 14262 ff. 7, 38; 14265.
39
Moray McLaren, Corsica Boswell: Paoli, Johnson and Freedom (London, 1966), 19 – 20, 27,
28.
40
William R. Siebenschuch, Form and Purpose in Boswell’s Biographical Works (Berkeley,
1972), 11.
37
38
142
Murray Pittock
Extraordinary, a piece of Boswellian apocrypha, the comparison is made very
explicit). Some people got the point: the Corsican Academy described Boswell
as an emissary ‘of the most prosperous kingdom of the Scots’ (which in fact
did not exist),41 while in England, Anna Laetitia Barbauld’s poem ‘Corsica’
compared Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican leader, to Wallace.42 The Scottish poet
William Julius Mickle (1734 – 88) planned to pay tribute to the Corsican
struggle and Boswell’s role in it in his unfinished ‘Prospects of Liberty and
of Slavery’, which eventually was subsumed by another fratriot project, The
Lusiad (1776).43 In Ireland, links were made in the press between Ireland and
Corsica: ‘the Irish by virtue of their own history should especially sympathize
with nations struggling for freedom’ noted Exshaw’s Magazine; the same note
appeared in the Belfast News-Letter and General Advertiser. A Corsican appeal
in Freeman’s Journal for 17 – 20 June 1768 was authored by a ‘Free Hibernian’:
quite possibly a persona of Boswell’s own.44
As the Corsican cause faded in the 1770s and 1780s, Boswell found others which satisfied this apparently unfocused, apparently disinterested, call for
freedom. In 1768, Giuseppe Marc’ Antonio Baretti had written to Boswell to
say that
If they [the Corsicans] prove successful (as is most probable) they will
be no rebels, and this will likewise be the case, when your Americans set
up for themselves; not to say that it had been likewise the case, if your
Scotch had succeeded in their last rebellions.45
This went to the heart of Boswell’s own set of political equations, as Baretti
may have known.
Shortly after the Scottish commander John Paul Jones (1747 – 92) sailed
up the Firth of Forth in a French squadron under the American flag in 1779,
The General Correspondence of James Boswell 1766-69 Volume 1 1766 – 1768, ed. Richard
C. Cole with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, assisted by James J. Caudle
(Edinburgh and New Haven, 1997), 270.
42
David Fairer and Christine Gerrard (eds), Eighteenth-Century Poetry: An Annotated
Anthology, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2003).
43
Mickle was also a man of Marian sympathies in the veiled Jacobite controversy between
Mary Queen of Scots’ supporters and her detractors, as his ‘Mary Queen of Scots. an
Elegiac Ode’ indicates; National Library of Scotland MS 15934 ff.86, 97.
44
The General Correspondence of James Boswell 1766 – 69 Volume 2 1768 – 1769, ed. Richard
C. Cole with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, assisted by James J. Caudle
(Edinburgh and New Haven, 1997), 179n.
45
The General Correspondence of James Boswell 1766 – 69, Volume 2, 34.
41
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Boswell, as usual rather evasively, confided to James Murray of Broughton that
‘were it not for what we must feel as Britons, we might now be companions in
triumph’ in having prophesied American victory. On 30 November 1781 (St
Andrew’s Day), Boswell heard with ‘joy’ of Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown
(Boswell to Paoli 8 January 1782).46 Boswell’s pro-Volunteer and ant-Unionist
sentiments concerning 1780s Ireland are also worthy of note, as is his comparison of Scotland to Corsica (and, unfavourably, to Grattan’s Ireland) in his
patriot Letter to the People of Scotland (1785), which stands in the tradition of
Swift’s Drapier and Scott’s Malagrowther, as a document of defensive patriotism which seizes on a relatively small issue as a synecdoche for the survival of
national peculiarity itself.47 Publication of the Letter ruined what was left of
Boswell’s career: it permanently damaged him. Most extraordinary perhaps
is the double correspondence Boswell carried on with Dundas and Paoli in
1794, requesting from the first the office of British minister in Corsica, while
encouraging the second thus: ‘shall the blood of so many heroes who have
sacrificed their lives for the freedom of Corsica serve to tinge only the purple
of a foreign Prince’,48 a remarkable sentiment to express about George III in
the era of the French revolutionary wars, a year after Nelson had lost an eye at
the siege of Calvi in Corsica while helping to make it British. Boswell goes on
to implore Paoli ‘never to yield . . . upon any pretence, or any specious offer’.
Great Britain is tyrannical, duplicitous and specious: these are the terms used
by Boswell in defence of Corsican independence.
Boswell’s Corsica was a fratriot obession. Fratriotism is a significant
phenomenon in defining empire and its limits in the Scottish and Irish imagination: its global reach should be evident even from the framework discussion
provided by this essay. Born from Scottish and Irish traditions of professional
soldiering, from Jacobite expatriate and other diasporic networks, and from
the distinctive intellectual and imaginative approaches of some among the
servants of empire, fratriotism carries an intellectual implication worthy of our
consideration: that people from small countries incorporated into large ones
may understand others in the same position, even if they themselves are part of
that position. Fratriotism as a concept is likely not to be restricted to Scotland
Boswell: Laird of Auchinleck 1778 – 1782, ed. Joseph W. Reed and Frederick A. Pottle,
(New York, 1977).136n1; Private Papers of James Boswell at Yale L980, 1001, 1004,
1011.
47
James Boswell, A Letter to the People of Scotland on the State of the Nation, (London, 1785),
72, 91.
48
The Private Papers of James Boswell, Yale C2181, L1025, 1026, 1027.
46
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Murray Pittock
and Ireland but to be present where similar structures are found elsewhere, and
indeed there is some evidence of this in New Spain. The British Empire was an
international polity whose development was accelerated by the rapid centralization of the British state, some of whose constituent parts had independently
sophisticated sets of cultural ideas, beliefs and practices which could not be
incorporated overnight, which preserved and even developed distinctive public
spheres, and which indeed contributed to political resistance. This empire is
thus likely to be a prime candidate for discussion in a fratriot context, but is
not the only candidate for such discussion. Nor, as I trust has been clear from
the preceding pages, are Boswell, Byron and Moore the only writers who merit
examination in fratriot terms.
University of Manchester
Radical Satire, Politics and Genre:
The Case of Thomas Moore
Jane Moore
The aim of this essay is to examine The Fudge Family in Paris (1818), the
political verse satire by the Irish wit and poet Thomas Moore (1779 – 1852),
not just for its obvious historical importance and the vividness which it
imparts to the political panorama of a lost era, but also for its formal and
generic significance. Understandably, given the decades of relative inattention
to the poet’s satire, recent Moore criticism, and my own included, has focused
on restoring the political resonances of that verse, especially in relation to the
plight of nineteenth-century Erin under British rule. Ireland, indeed, is the
theme and impetus of much of the satire Moore wrote throughout his long
career. He returned repeatedly to the troubles of his country, both before and
after the granting of Catholic emancipation in 1829. Ireland had a defining impact on Moore’s satire, whether as the point of explicit focus or, as in
the satire under examination in this essay, as an important informing context
and circumambient presence. However, though Moore engaged closely with
radical ideas of emancipation, liberation, and freedom in his satire, he also
endorsed a notion of formal satirical excellence in the Horatian tradition,
the genre that he reinvented and in which he made his name as a satirist.
Whilst Moore scholars have addressed the political-historical interest of his
satire over the last decade, they have paid rather less attention to the formal
and stylistic aspects of that rich body of work.1 My essay seeks, through an
analysis of Moore’s mature epistolary Horatian satire, The Fudge Family in
Paris, to discuss issues of form and genre and Moore’s position in a longstanding satirical tradition of Pope and Anstey. As well as an outspoken Whig
critic of British politics, Thomas Moore was a self-conscious participant in an
established Horatian tradition, a tradition which he simultaneously utilized
Landmark studies of Moore’s satirical verse include Gary Dyer, British Satire and the
Politics of Style, 1789 – 1832 (Cambridge, 1997), Jefferey W. Vail, The Literary Relationship
of Lord Byron & Thomas Moore (Baltimore and London, 2001), my own edition of The
Satires of Thomas Moore, Vol. 5, British Satire: 1785 – 1840, 5 vols, gen. ed. John Strachan
(London, 2003). An earlier work worth citing here is Irene B. Lurkis’s unpublished
PhD thesis, Moore and Moderation: A Study of Thomas Moore’s Political and Social Satires,
University of Southern California, 1979.
1
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Jane Moore
and renewed to serve his ideological purposes, fusing combative liberal politics with sprightly comic satire.
Publication of The Fudge Family in Paris on 20 April 1818 quickly confirmed
Thomas Moore’s reputation as the best-known liberal Whig satirist, Byron
apart, of his day. Moore wrote the work under his pseudonym ‘Thomas Brown,
the Younger’, which he had used earlier for the publication of his first extended
Horatian satire, Intercepted Letters; or, The Twopenny Post-bag (1813), a hugely
successful radical comic assault in a series of eight letters on the anti-Catholic
Tory government and the apostate Regent, who, in 1812, had unexpectedly
abandoned his commitment to Whig politics, betraying with it the great oppositional cause of Catholic emancipation. As with Intercepted Letters, The Fudge
Family in Paris quickly became known as Moore’s work and easily rivaled the
popularity of its predecessor, reaching a ninth edition within the year.
The twelve verse epistles that comprise The Fudge Family in Paris recount
the adventures in post-Waterloo Paris of an Irish but British-identified
Protestant family keen to take advantage of the travel opportunities provided
by the peace. The oleaginous father, Phil Fudge, a former rebel whose political
opportunism now leads him to side with the British Tory government, heads
the family party. He is in Paris at the behest of his mentor, the Irish hate figure
Lord Castlereagh, to write a book in defence of the Holy Alliance. Joining Phil
are his flighty teenage daughter Biddy, her elder brother Bob, a gourmand with
pretensions to dandyism, and their third cousin, Phelim Connor, employed
as Bob’s private tutor. Connor’s earnest Catholicism and tub-thumping Irish
patriotism form a marked contrast with the decadence of his cousins, making
him an unlikely mentor for the self-indulgent Bob and throwing into comic
sharp relief the vacuity of his cousin’s values. Moore also introduces an editor
figure, and whose preface and mock-scholarly footnotes to the epistles add
substantially to the satiric humour.
Biddy is the most fully developed of the characters; her letter opens the
series, and, through providing information about the other family members, she
comments indirectly on the political situation. A quixotic eighteen- year- old,
who dreams of romance and adventure, Biddy’s innocence is exploited by
Moore to satirize her father’s politics, her naivety proving an excellent foil for
his cynicism. Her first letter, written to her friend Dolly back home in Ireland,
reports on her father thus:
As to Pa, what d’ye think?—mind, it’s all entre nous,
But you know, love, I never keep secrets from you—
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Why, he’s writing a book—what! a tale? a romance?
No, ye Gods, would it were!—but his Travels in France;
At the special desire (he let out t’other day)
Of his great friend and patron, my Lord C—STL—RE—GH,
Who said, ‘My dear FUDGE’—I forget th’ exact words,
And, it’s strange, no one ever remembers my Lord’s;
But ’twas something to say that, as all must allow
A good orthodox work is much wanting just now,
To expound to the world the new—thingummie—science,
Found out by the—what’s-its-name—Holy Alliance,
And to prove to mankind that their rights are but folly,
Their freedom a joke (which it is, you know, DOLLY),
There’s none’, said his Lordship, ‘if I may be judge,
Half so fit for this great undertaking as FUDGE!’
(Letter I, 67 – 82)2
In contrast to the ill-tempered assaults of his early Juvenalian satires, where
Moore rails at his targets, evoking moral outrage in his American ‘Epistles’,
for instance, over the well-founded rumour that Jefferson kept a slave as his
mistress, or ranting at Castlereagh’s iniquities in Corruption and Intolerance
(1808), Moore’s mature Horatian works see him developing the use of fictional character as means of attacking his targets by a more indirect mode than
hitherto.3 Biddy’s letters in The Fudge Family in Paris enable Moore to ridicule Castlereagh’s brand of anti-Irish Toryism through the irony of the praise
awarded him by a young woman who is essentially ignorant of politics, her
girlish innocence contrasting with the grotesque injustices taking place at the
hands of her father’s hero and the despised Holy Alliance. The Popean device
of zeugma is used extensively here: in her naivety, Biddy links ‘rights’ and
This and all subsequent references to The Fudge Family in Paris are from my edition The
Satires of Thomas Moore.
3
Moore’s volume of poems on America, entitled Epistles, Odes and Other Poems (1806)
includes the vitriolic satires, ‘Epistle VI’ and ‘Epistle VII’, which assault what he
saw as Jefferson’s hypocritical brand of democratic politics. ‘Epistle VI’ seizes on
the rumour that he kept a black slave, Sally Hemings, as his mistress. The epistles
are reprinted in The Satires of Thomas Moore, 6 – 17. Corruption and Intolerance (1808)
takes the form of a savage reply in heroic couplets by an Irishman to an English
adversarius who has been boasting of ‘Britain’s glorious rights’. The second satire,
‘Intolerance’, attacks British misrule in Ireland, damning Hawkesbury (later Lord
Liverpool), Castlereagh and Camden for their part in Ireland’s religious persecution.
See The Satires of Thomas Moore, 22 – 45.
2
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Jane Moore
‘folly’, ‘freedom’ and ‘joke’, and greatness with ‘Fudge’ (her father). Similarly,
Phil’s moral bankruptcy turns his own praise for Castlereagh into its opposite,
condemnation.
The jaunty anapaestic tetrameter lines used for Biddy’s epistles create
the appearance of a lighter feminine mode of speech, emphasizing her girlish playfulness. Her brother Bob’s epistles are also in anapaestic tetrameter,
and here the lightness of metre effectively ironizes his status as a representative of that class of young men destined by breeding, or, as in Bob’s case, by
paternal influence, to become pillars of the British establishment. Phil’s first
sycophantic missive to Castlereagh sneaks in a parenthetical reference to Bob:
‘(My son, my Lord, a youth of parts,/ Who longs to be a small place-holder)’
(Letter II, 104 – 5). The gourmandizing, wine slugging, dandified Bob shares
Biddy’s blindness to the bleak reality endured by the French masses. As the
representative of his class of hedonistic young gentlemen, and as a youthful
caricature of that most royal dandy the Prince Regent, Bob is emblematically indifferent to the injustice of France’s despoliation by the Holy Alliance.
The obsequious Phil affects to worship his Tory lords and masters, his daughter Biddy bows before French fashion, her patriotic cousin Phelim vows
allegiance to his country, whilst Bob genuflects at the high altar of French
cuisine. Letter VIII in which Bob scornfully describes the foreignness of the
Parisian boulevard
Green-grocers, green gardens—one hardly knows whether
’Tis country or town, they’re so mess’d up together!
(Letter VIII, 24 – 5)
culminates in a mock-epic appeal to the ‘Holy Allies’ to save the one aspect of
French culture Bob does appreciate, her cuisine:
Forbid it, forbid it, ye Holy Allies!
Take whatever ye fancy—take statues, take money—
But leave them, oh leave them, their Perigueux pies,
Their glorious goose-livers, and high pickled tunny!
Though many, I own are the evils they’ve brought us,
Though Royalty’s here on her very last legs,
Yet, who can help loving the land that has taught us
Six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs?
(Letter VIII, 58 – 65)
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The satire works of course through the elevation of Bob’s favourite French
dishes above the country’s statuary and her currency, the two latter presumably
being of debased value in the wake of wartime defeat. Moore undoubtedly is
drawing on the influence of Pope in his use of antithesis, juxtaposition, and
anti-climax. But he also borrows the Popean mock-epic model in the introduction of an editorial figure who annotates Bob’s epistles, and those of the
rest of the party, with comic solemnity. Thus Bob’s mock-epic salute to a land
that has ‘taught us six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs’ prompts
the over-scrupulous editor to vouchsafe the accuracy of Bob’s information:
‘The exact number mentioned by M. de la Reynière—“On connoît en France
685 manières différentes d’accommoder les oeufs; sans compter celles que nos
savans imaginent chaque jour”.’
The editor exists in The Fudge Family in Paris as a separate character who,
though not as fully developed as Bob or Biddy, has his own identity – appropriately, that of the self-important, moralizing pedant. He writes a preface to the
satire, signed ‘Thomas Brown, the Younger’, which distinguishes him from the
various purported writers of the letters collected in his book, and from their
actual author, Thomas Moore, in which he regrets having to omit some part
of Bob Fudge’s third letter on account of titillating references to contemporary
French dancer: ‘Marinette’s thin drapery, which, it was thought might give
offence to certain well-meaning persons’. Yet at the same time as the editor
censors the racier parts of Bob’s account, he admiringly annotates Bob’s and
Biddy’s whirl of social activity (diligently footnoting the names of dressmakers,
dining halls, theatres, pleasure gardens, and so on) which inadvertently calls
into question both his own judgement and that of the characters epitomizing
the values he professes to share. As Irene B. Lurkis observes:
The editor’s solemn footnotes serve to the highlight the foolishness of
Bob’s excessive enthusiasm for French dining customs and his accompanying disdain for those of the English. Thus, when Bob extols the
virtues of ‘dejeuner à la fourchette’:
There, DICK, what a breakfast!—oh, not like your ghost
Of a breakfast in England, your curst tea and toast;
the editor points out assiduously:
Is Mr. Bob aware that his contempt for tea renders him liable to a
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charge of atheism? Such, at least, is the opinion cited in Christian,
Falster, Amoenitat. Philog.—4
The original footnote is at twice as long as the snippet quoted here, and is replete
with Greek and Latin tags together with a mock ode to tea, translated from the
Greek. Whilst the editor busily annotates Bob’s frivolous predilections, he lets
slip by him a number of the young buck’s more off-colour remarks, including
a comparison of his fashionable neck-cloth with the noose that circles a condemned man’s neck, a statement verging on the licentious.
I rise—put on neck-cloth—stiff, tight, as can be—
For a lad who goes into the world, DICK, like me,
Should have his neck tied up, you know—there’s no doubt of it—
Almost as tight as some lads who go out of it.
With whiskers well oil’d, and with boots that ‘hold up
The mirror to nature’—so bright you could sup
Off the leather like china . . .
(Letter III, 31 – 7)
Bob is quoting from the advertising copy used in Robert Warren’s famous
contemporary campaign for his boot polish, which was illustrated with a cat
jumping in fright at her reflection on a boot polished to a fine lustre. The
jumbling of colloquial detail (neck-tie fashions and advertising campaigns for
boot polish) with the reference to capital punishment, signals Bob’s misplaced
values and, by extension, those of the editor. It also hints at a nastiness lurking
beneath Bob’s apparently harmless hedonism, an attribute that is developed
in The Fudges in England (1835), Moore’s late sequel to The Fudge Family in
Paris, which sees him having grown into a gouty, boorish and bad-tempered
clergyman.
Moore’s use of character and the verse epistle to construct a series of firstperson satiric narratives has a formal antecedent in Christopher Anstey’s witty
eighteenth-century verse satire, The New Bath Guide (1766). Anstey’s work
is a good-natured satire on the follies of high society related in a series of fifteen verse-letters, eleven written almost entirely in anapaestic tetrameter, by a
family of country innocents from the North of England during a visit to the
fashionable spa town of Bath. So popular was Anstey’s work that anapaestic
Lurkis, Moore and Moderation, 147.
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tetrameter couplets became known in the late eighteenth century as ‘Anstey
measure’ or ‘Bath Guide Verse’; similarly the success of The Fudge Family in
Paris established that metre as Moore’s trademark during the first half of the
nineteenth century. As with Anstey, Moore uses the measure to create a lively
conversational tone within the discursive framework of the verse epistle. Both
satirists exploit the expansive nature of the anapaestic line in their development of entertaining characters, immediately recognizable as social types. And
both rely too upon the use of external detail to create the effect of verisimilitude of character. The reader engages with Bob and Biddy Fudge, for instance,
primarily through the detailed, almost theatrical, descriptions of their social
activities, rather than through psychological narrative. Bob and Biddy whirl
through Paris as through a fairground hall of mirrors, exaggerating and distorting, but also reflecting a truth about human character. In the context of satire
that truth is invariably a social and political one, so that politics and social
history, rather than forming the backdrop to the action, actively impinge upon
and shape the lives of the characters. To borrow Maud Ellmann’s description
of character in the Anglo-Irish novels of Elizabeth Bowen, it is as if material
objects and events take the place of psychology.5 Character in The Fudge Family
in Paris is shaped by descriptions of dresses and dances, gardens and romance,
in Biddy’s case, and pâté, and stays, wine and cutlets, boulevards and theatres
in Bob’s.
Moore’s achievement in The Fudge in Family in Paris and his advancement on Anstey’s New Bath Guide is to develop character as a means of
giving his satire a radical point and a political focus. Whereas Anstey satirizes a social type, without singling out for scorn or ridicule a named or
known individual, or providing serious moral condemnation, Moore deploys
character to supply a radical analysis of the peace following the Napoleonic
wars. The name of his chief political target, C—STL—RE—GH, is individualized by means of the long dash, or series of dashes, leaving the reader in
little doubt over his identity. The much despised Castlereagh is one thing,
innocent or foolish characters such as Bob and Biddy, however, are quite
another, and I would argue that it is in the use of such minor anonymous
characters to convey radical political meanings that Moore finds his forte as
a radical Horatian satirist. Through experimenting with fictional personas
and ironic voice, Moore blends combative liberal politics into light Horatian
Satire. A character like Biddy, for example, is used to entertain and engage
Maud Ellmann, Elizabeth Bowen: The Shadow Across the Page (Edinburgh, 2003), 42.
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Jane Moore
the reader (she has an independent existence as one of the satire’s cast of
dramatis personae) but she is also a conduit for the radical analysis of the
political situation in post-Waterloo Paris. Indeed, I would argue that Moore’s
strength as a radical satirist lies in his almost novelistic use of portraiture and
character to create political meaning.
The Fudge Family in Paris sees Moore borrowing the techniques of prose
fiction imaginatively to reconstruct as poetic satire a set of messages and morals
that are provocatively deferred, inferred, or ironized. It is a work with a strong
novelistic vision. Ronan Kelly, in an important recent essay, has argued that
Moore moved towards the novel form in the mid 1820s with the publication
of his agrarian prose satire Memoirs of Captain of Rock, The Celebrated Irish
Chieftain (1824).
Moore regularly turned to prose express complex arguments. Indeed,
from 1823, the mid-point of his writing life, he largely abandoned his
career as a poet, and from this date became a prose writer of considerable repute.6
Moore did indeed move to the novel in the post-Napoleonic age, but this
trend, I would argue, is already apparent in his decision to write satire in a novelistic tradition (evident in the vivid panorama of The Fudge Family in Paris).
Moore was already a displaying a novelistic vision in co-opting the tropes and
techniques of prose fiction for verse Satire as early as 1819 in The Fudge Family
in Paris. Furthermore, Moore did not reject verse in favour of prose for the
expression of complex arguments post 1823. Indeed, he continued to contribute occasional verse satire (in the precise sense of that term) to The Times and
the Morning Chronicle for another two decades and he returned to epistolary
verse satire in his final extended narrative poem, The Fudges in England (1835),
his sequel to The Fudge Family in Paris.
Moore himself is on record as saying that Ireland was a subject uniquely
suited to the novel form, and it is worth quoting at length from his essay on
‘Irish Novels’, published in The Edinburgh Review in February 1826, for its
retrospective illumination of the novelistic tropes and techniques deployed in
The Fudge Family in Paris. The essay, which opens with an acknowledgement
of Scott’s influence on the ‘impulse towards Novel-writing which is, at present,
all over Europe’, proposes the thesis that Ireland, of all countries, is uniquely
Ronan Kelly, ‘Another Side of Thomas Moore’, History Ireland (Autumn 2003), 39 – 43;
42.
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suited to the novel.7 Indeed, Moore had demonstrated this point in a mutated
form in The Fudge Family in Paris. He argues, wryly, that the novel, the inferior
sister of epic poetry, is in its debased literary standing better fitted to Ireland’s
‘wretched history’, as he puts it:
The same causes, however, that have embittered and degraded the history
of Ireland, so as to render it incapable of furnishing any safe or worthy
theme for the poet, have brought the character of its people, both moral
and social, to a state which is eminently favourable to the more humble
inspirations of the novelist. Though the nobler quarry of the Muse is
wanting, there is plenty of small game for the satirist and observer of
character. The anomalies necessarily engendered throughout the whole
frame of society by the inverted and unnatural position of all the institutions of that country; the influence which such a state of things must
have upon all ranks—those of the higher, in whose hands the execution
of unequal laws is placed, being forced, by the very nature of the instrument which they wield, to be bad judges, bad magistrates, and bad
citizens, in spite of themselves; while those of the lower class, placed
by the same causes in habitual opposition to the law, seem, by riot and
plunder, but to fulfil their allotted destiny, and to perform the base, as
it were, in that great concert of discord which reigns throughout;—the
vulgar arrogance of the small gentry, so long encouraged by the despotism thus put in commission among them;—the low, circumventing
cunning, which is the only peaceable weapon left to their victims, and,
which is so observable among the Greeks and other trampled-down
nations, substituting the serpentine line of the slave for the straight-forward course of the freeman;—those habits of thoughtless and tasteless
extravagance, which a long monopoly of the public purse engenders in
the master, and that recklessness of comfort, and even of life, to which a
long despair of justice reduces the slave!—all these are features, but too
prominent in the condition of Ireland, to which a novelist might, in his
portraitures of them, give unbounded variety of play.8
This exhaustive list, with no sentence break, of all that’s corrupt in Ireland
and corrupting of its people, brings to mind the powerful, metaphorically
Thomas Moore, ‘Irish Novels’, The Edinburgh Review, Vol. 43 (February 1826), 356 – 72;
356.
8
Moore, ‘Irish Novels’, 358 – 9.
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Jane Moore
extravagant denunciation of the Chancery with which Dickens opened Bleak
House twenty-six years later. Unlike Dickens, Moore did not turn to the novel
proper to inscribe the wrongs of his country but he does pre-empt some
Dickensian techniques in his satiric representation of character. Dickens’s
comedy is often dependent upon grotesquerie and so too is the social criticism
of his fiction. There is a similar use of grotesquerie in The Fudge Family in Paris
in the figure of the odious Phil Fudge in his role of Lord Castlereagh’s fictional
surrogate. Biddy, meanwhile, is the embodiment of charming, sentimentalized
femininity, the flip side of the Dickensian grotesque. Notwithstanding the
putative parallels between the treatment of character by Moore and Dickens, I
am not of course suggesting that the former writer directly influenced the latter.
But I do wish to suggest that the two writers inhabited the same cultural orbit
of late Georgian satire, that Dickens, if you will, is as much a late Georgian in
terms of his literary humour as he is a Victorian social realist in his depiction
of the horrors of contemporary London.
Both the earlier and the later Fudge satires adopt and adapt the tropes and
techniques of prose fiction (the creation of a clearly delineated cast of characters who interact realistically within in a unified plot to produce the semblance
of verisimilitude). Rather like the master of historical fiction, Scott, Moore
uses little people to unfold a grand historical narrative. His narratives of political corruption in Ireland and Europe are told through the satirical portraiture
of inconsequential figures: Biddy and Bob are representatives typical of their
class; Phelim is an impoverished tutor, and Phil, though having pretensions to
statesmanship, is a risibly pale imitation of his patron, Castlereagh. The historical novel, as described by Georg Lukács, developed in the hands of Scott
through the narration of ‘small encounters’; it can be said similarly of Moore’s
Fudge Family in Paris that the keen political-historical thrust of the narrative
occurs in the ‘small skirmishes’ between the so-called little people. 9
Phil Fudge is one such character. Indeed, he is a kind of hybrid character,
existing as the inconsequential father to the fictional Fudge family, and serving as a fictional version of two actual historical figures, his hero, the former
Chief Secretary of Ireland Lord Castlereagh on the one hand, and, on the
other, the notorious informer Thomas Reynolds, who spied on the United
Irishmen organization in 1798 and who testified in the ensuing treason trials,
for which he was rewarded handsomely by the British government. The letters
of Phil Fudge develop Moore’s use of character to generate radical political sat Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel, trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (London, 1962),
43.
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ire, which works by establishing Phil as Castlereagh’s fictional surrogate (Phil’s
letters ape his mentor’s well-known tendency to garble his words) so that in
ridiculing the fictional character of Fudge Moore equally condemns his mentor. The editorial commentary is once again important here. When Phil copies
his patron’s habit of speaking in a thickly metaphorical style, saying of the
political state of play in Paris, this ‘ “Demoraliz’d” metropolis’
Where (still to use your Lordship’s tropes)
The level of obedience slopes
Upward and downward as the stream
Of hydra faction kicks the beam!
(Letter II, 8 – 11)
the editor informs us:
‘This excellent imitation of the noble Lord’s style shows how deeply Mr. Fudge must have studied his great original. Irish oratory,
indeed, abounds with such startling peculiarities. Thus the eloquent
Counsellor B——, in describing some hypocritical pretender to charity, said, “He put his hand in his breeches-pocket, like a crocodile,
and,” &c. &c.’
The satire on Castelereagh works through the editor’s representation of Fudge’s
(and Castlereagh’s) metaphorically confused oratory as the desirable norm, and
the political comedy of the situation is sharpened by the use of a sprightly iambic tetrameter that is inappropriately matched to Phil’s aspirations to
statesmanship, serving to draw attention to his fraudulent or ‘fudged’ politics,
his inherent lack of gravitas or political integrity, and damning by association
the ravening flock of Tory leaders he professes to admire.
The editor’s misplaced approval of Fudge the elder and the latter’s equally
suspect respect for Castlereagh continues the theme of mistaken values, of
post-war turmoil and disorder, which coheres the letters of the individual
Fudge family members and lends a novelistic unity to the whole. In his treatment of that theme, Moore ensures that condemnation of British policies and
the Holy Alliance remains at the forefront of the work and in this way he
moves beyond the gentle social satire of his predecessor Anstey, who targets
the follies of fashionable society without offering serious moral judgement.
By contrast, even when The Fudge Family in Paris appears at its most humor-
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Jane Moore
ous, it never restrains the political anger aroused by what Moore sees as the
injustice of British rule. Gary Dyer points out that Moore’s Horatian satire
is distinguished by an ‘angry playfulness’, so that whilst The Fudge Family in
Paris is Horatian in tone and form, it is ‘far from being as amicable as the term
“Horatian” would suggest’.10
Indeed, Moore’s achievement in the creation of the characters Biddy,
Bob and Phil Fudge lies in retaining the political force of the satire without
sacrificing the interests of character and dramatic action. An example is the
treatment of the theme of mistaken identity, which is writ large in Biddy’s
story in a plot that is at once personal and political. In keeping with her
character of the sentimental, quixotic heroine familiar from generic circulating-library fiction, Biddy sets out to find romance in Paris, the idea of
a mysterious and foreign stranger appealing to her sense of adventure. Her
dreams are shattered, in one of the funniest scenes in the satire, on the discovery that her Romeo is not the King of Prussia traveling incognito, as she
had fondly imagined, and not even a Colonel, but a mere tradesman, a linen
draper called Monsieur Calicot, meaning of course callicot, which she misreads as Colonel. She reports to her friend Dolly that it was nightfall when
she received his card,
the name, rather creas’d—
But ’twas CALICOT—something—a Colonel, at least!
(Letter X, 120 – 1)
In an earlier moment, Calico’s ‘Corsair expression’ (a nod by Moore to the
Byronic hero of that name, at which Byron reportedly took umbrage) is
compared to that of a hyena. Biddy first meets her hero during an evening’s
entertainment at the Beaujon, a Paris pleasure ground, with a roller coaster.
Breathless with excitement, she writes:
There came up—imagine, dear DOLL, if you can—
A fine sallow, sublime, sort of Werter-fac’d man,
With mustachios that gave (what we read of so oft)
The dear Corsair expression, half savage, half soft,
As Hyaenas in love may be fancied to look
(Letter V, 97 – 101)
Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, 1789 – 1832, 41.
10
157
Moore uses the romantic sub-plot to satirize contemporary sentimental fiction
and its effect on young women readers who are incapable of distinguishing
the figure of a Werter from a Corsair and a Corsair from a hyena, or, indeed, a
shopkeeper from the King of Prussia. He also uses Biddy’s inability to see the
reality of her romantic hero as a metaphor for the more serious blindness of
her father and brother to the injustices of the Holy Alliance. Indeed, Biddy’s
hero provides the opportunity for a political jab at the Alliance, as follows.
Biddy reports in a postscript that her father, on espying her lover seated in one
of the Beaujon roller-coaster cars, decides on the basis of his erect posture that
he must be the King of Prussia:
Nota Bene.—Papa’s almost certain ’tis he—
For he knows the Legitimate cut, and could see,
In the way he went poising and manag’d to tower
So erect in the car, the true Balance of Power.
(Letter V, 146 – 9)
The upright posture of the linen draper, suspected the King of Prussia, visually
represents what Moore took to be tyrannical powers of the Holy Alliance, punning on the word ‘Legitimate’ to mean the very opposite.
Phelim Connor, cousin to the younger Fudges, although represented by the
morally confused editor represents him as the black sheep of the family, stands
for political right and justice. In Connor, Moore presents a national hero for
Ireland, who typically in this narrative of mistaken identities is not recognized
as such. In her first letter Biddy innocently compares him to Napoleon:
His nose and his chin—which Papa rather dreads,
As the Bourbons, you know, are suppressing all heads
That resemble old NAP’s, and who knows but their honours
May think, in their fright, of suppressing poor CONNOR’S?
(Letter I, 97 – 100)
Connor’s epistles reverberate with a political fury captured in thundering
Juvenalian couplets that the editor is compelled to censor, as in the following
attack on the arch-enemy of Ireland, Castlereagh, whose betrayal of those in
his country who loved him is likened to the treachery of Hercules’ jealous wife
Hera who gave him a deadly shirt spread with the Centaur’s blood believing this
would act as a love ointment and keep her husband faithful to her. Unknown
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Jane Moore
to her, the shirt was adulterated with a poison and when Hercules put it on the
poison ate through his flesh the bone, killing him. Connor declaims:
’Twas an Irish head, an Irish heart,
Made thee the fall’n and tarnish’d thing thou art;
That, as the centaur gave th’ infected vest
In which he died, to rack his conqueror’s breast,
We sent thee C——GH:—as heaps of dead
Have slain their slayers by the pest they spread,
So hath our land breath’d out, thy fame to dim,
Thy strength to waste, and rot thee, soul and limb.
Her worst infections all condens’d in him!
*
*
*
(Letter IV, 55 – 63)
Gary Dyer argues that radical satire in the Romantic period is typically
Menippean, deploying a wide variety of verse forms, moving from the grandeur of the heroic couplet and elevated rhetoric of Augustan satire towards a
‘more colloquial language but also intrinsically comic triple meters and iambic
tetrameter couplets (hudibrastics)’.11 Certainly this is true of The Fudge Family
in Paris, which is written in a variety of metres, anapaestic tetrameter, iambic
tetrameter as well as Connor’s heroic couplets. Moore’s satire is Menippean
too in its fusion of characteristics of the novel form (characterization, verisimilitude, a unified narrative) with those of verse (rhyme, metre, imagery). This
hybridity of form and tone, which Dyer identifies as a stylistic trait of radical
satire in the Romantic period may also be explained as a national characteristic, as a feature specifically of Irish writing in the nineteenth century. In his
essay on Moore’s prose satire Captain Rock, Luke Gibbons suggests that the
‘oscillation in the narrative voice(s)’ which is one of the marked features of that
text, is ‘precisely the “literary difficulity” in explaining Ireland, or subjecting
it to one authoritative point of view’.12 Gibbons argues that what he calls the
‘formal instability’13 of Captain Rock’s narrative organization arises from the
unstable position of Ireland under Britain in the early nineteenth century. As
Dyer, British Satire and the Politics of Style, 40.
Luke Gibbons, ‘Between Captain Rock and a Hard Place: Art and Agrarian Insurgency’,
in Tadhg Foley and Seán Ryder (eds), Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century
(Dublin, 1998), 23 – 44; 30, fn.19.
13
Gibbons, ‘Between Captain Rock and a Hard Place’, 42.
11
12
159
he puts it: ‘The difficulties in establishing a framing narrative, ordering the disparate elements in a story or picture and subjecting them to a unified point of
view, presented itself not simply as an aesthetic difficulty but as an intractable
political problem’.14 This interpretation of Moore’s exploitation of a variety of
forms and tones in Captain Rock makes questions of form and tone questions
of ideology and politics.
Moore’s technical achievement, which is the political strength of his satire,
lies to a large degree in the hybridity of form (the combination of aspects of the
novel and poetry together, the mixing of Horatian and Juvenalian tones, the
creation of characters that are plausible and entertaining but are used as satiric
objects). Whatever Moore’s fondness for entertaining, captured in the popular
image of him as the darling of English drawing rooms, in his role of author
of the Irish Melodies, there is no question that in his satires he is passionately
committed to addressing the wrongs of Ireland and of Europe savaged by the
Tories and the Holy Alliance. His radical friend and poet Leigh Hunt once
hymned him as
A maker of sweets, busy, sparkling, and singing,
Yet armed with an exquisite point too for stinging.15
neatly encapsulating the poet’s practice of composing both drawing-room song
and sharp political satire. In his Horatian satire too, Moore tickles while he
stings, as it were. The satiric brilliance of The Fudge Family in Paris resides in
the creation of entertaining characters and a compelling plot whilst sustaining
a cutting narrative irony that keeps the larger radical political themes of the
satire (the despoliation of Europe and the tyranny of government and, indeed,
the wrongs of Ireland) firmly in view.
University of Cardiff
Gibbons, ‘Between Captain Rock and a Hard Place’, 30.
Leigh Hunt, ‘To Thomas Moore’, The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt, gen. eds Robert
Morrison and Michael Eberle-Sinatra, 6 Vols (London, 2003), Vol. 5, Poetical Works,
1799 – 1821, ed. John Strachan, 133 – 4.
14
15
Away with the Faeries (or, It’s Grimm up North):
Yeats and Scotland
Willy Maley
Yeats and Scotland is a coupling that might at first glance seem odd or awkward, but with the recent rise of Irish-Scottish studies it appears less so.
According to Cairns Craig: ‘The Irish Revival that Yeats led was profoundly
shaped by the example of Scotland’s acquisition of cultural capital a century
before, and constructed on its theoretical foundations’.1 Yet despite Yeats’s
Celticism, and his open, if uneven, admiration for the poetry of Robert Burns
there are fewer clear connections between his vision of Ireland and his vision
of Scotland than might be expected. Yeats, like Joyce, arrived at a negative and
pessimistic view of Scotland, and this perspective derived from a despairing
vision of the Scottish legacy in the North of Ireland.2 Unlike Joyce though,
Yeats came to this conclusion only after a lengthy effort to build bridges with
Ulster, and, by extension, Scotland, through a common Celtic spirit, and,
more concretely, through his admiration for the achievements of a series of
Scottish writers. Scotophobia in an Irish context is far from being the province
of modern writers, and has been a recurrent feature of Irish culture at least
since the Ulster Plantation.3 Attridge and Howes’ collection of essays in 2000
addressed Semicolonial Joyce, yet Joyce is a writer who complained of struggling
under a double yoke of Roman and British imperialism, and was thus doubly
colonized, or double-colonial. In ‘Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages’ (1907),
Joyce declared: ‘I do not see what good it does to fulminate against the English
tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul’.4 Yeats, by
contrast, can be seen to be ‘semicolonial’, yet he has recently been the subject
Cairns Craig, ‘National Literature and Cultural Capital in Scotland and Ireland’, in Liam
McIlvanney and Ray Ryan (eds), Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society, 1700–2000
(Dublin, 2005), 38 – 64, [57].
2
Willy Maley, ‘“Kilt by Kelt Shell Kithagain with Kinagain”: Joyce and Scotland’, in
Derek Attridge and Marjorie Howes (eds), Semi-Colonial Joyce (Cambridge, 2000),
201 – 18.
3
Christopher Fox, ‘Swift’s Scotophobia’, Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 6 (2002), 2,
43 – 65.
4
Richard Ellmann and Ellsworth Mason (eds), The Critical Writings of James Joyce (New
York, 1959), 173.
1
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Willy Maley
of a series of interventions, including a major collection of essays, promoting
his ‘postcolonial’ status.5
In this essay, I want to argue for a Scottish context for Yeats and to show
the extent to which his image of Scotland was touched and tainted by Ulster.
I do not intend to establish such a context through a reading of On Baile’s
Strand, although the repeated references there to ‘hungry Scotland’ are worth
noting,6 nor do I propose to trace the fugitive and furtive figuring of Scotland
in the poetry. I found just one odd instance of the word ‘Scot’, in ‘NineteenNineteen’, where the verse runs as follows:
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
The night can sweat with terror as before
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.7
The drunken soldiery going scot-free, are they the weasels? In Shakespeare’s
Henry V, an English Lord invokes ‘a saying very old and true: / “If that you
will France win, / Then with Scotland first begin”’. He goes on to rehearse a
standard fear of the time:
For once the eagle England being in prey,
To her unguarded nest, the weasel Scot
Comes sneaking, and so sucks her princely eggs,
Playing the mouse in absence of the cat,
To ‘tame and havoc more then she can eat.8
These are weasel words, for the fear of the Scots is bound up with an imperial
Deborah Fleming, (ed.), W. B. Yeats and Postcolonialism (West Cornwall, 2001); Marjorie
Howes, ‘Postcolonial Yeats: Culture, Enlightenment, and the Public Sphere’, Field
Day Review 2 (2006), 55 – 73; Jahan Ramazani, ‘Is Yeats a Postcolonial Poet?’, Raritan
17 (1998), 3, 64 – 89.
6
J. P. Harrington, (ed.), Modern Irish Drama: a Norton Critical Edition (New York, 1991),
15.
7
W. B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (London, 1983), 233.
8
Henry V, 1.2.169 – 73.
5
Away with the Faeries (or, It’s Grim up North): Yeats and Scotland
163
enterprise elsewhere – ostensibly France, allegorically Ireland – and the speech
captures beautifully the extent to which Scotland is the key to containing
Ireland, and vice versa.
I will be exploring the Yeats and Scotland connection largely by author,
through his encounters with Burns, Scott, Stevenson, and MacDiarmid. When
I came up with the idea for a discussion of Yeats and Scotland, I was thinking of a short text reprinted in Mythologies, entitled ‘A Remonstrance with
Scotsmen for having soured the disposition of their Ghosts and faeries’. An
earlier version, ‘Scots and Irish Faeries’, had appeared in the Scots Observer, on
2 March 1889. In this text, Yeats accused his Celtic country cousins of demonising the little people:
In Scotland you are too theological, too gloomy. You have made even
the Devil religious. ‘Where do you live, good-wyf, and how is the minister?’ he said to the witch when he met her on the high-road, as it
came out in the trial. You have burnt all the witches. In Ireland we
have left them alone. To be sure, the ‘loyal minority’ knocked out the
eye of one with a cabbage stump on the 31st March 1711, in the town
of Carrickfergus. But then the ‘loyal minority’ is half Scottish. You
have discovered the faeries to be pagan and wicked. You would like
to have them all up before the magistrate. In Ireland warlike mortals
have gone among them, and helped them in their battles, and they in
turn have taught men great skills with herbs, and permitted some few
to hear their tunes. Carolan slept upon a faery rath. Ever after their
tunes ran in his head, and made him the great musician he was. In
Scotland you have denounced them from the pulpit. In Ireland they
have been permitted by the priests to consult them on the state of
their souls. Unhappily the priests have decided that they have no souls,
that they will dry up like so much bright vapour at the last day; but
more in sadness than in anger. The Catholic religion likes to keep on
good terms with its neighbours.
Yeats thus uses his argument about Ireland being a friendly host to spirits in
order to forge an alliance with Catholicism. Protestantism wants facts, not
faeries or folklore. That puts Yeats and Protestant Ireland, north and south, in
a slightly problematic position. Although he is drawing a distinction between
Ireland and Scotland, Yeats is also speaking to a division within Ireland, as witness the unsporting behaviour of ‘the “loyal minority”’, explained by the fact
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Willy Maley
that ‘the “loyal minority” is half Scottish’, and not neighbourly and tolerant
like the true Catholic Irish:
These two different ways of looking at things have influenced in each
country the whole world of sprites and goblins. For their gay and graceful doings you must go to Ireland; for their deeds of terror to Scotland.
Our Irish faery terrors have about them something of make-believe.
When a countryman strays into an enchanted hovel, and is made to
turn a corpse all night on a spit before the fire, we do not feel anxious;
we know he will wake in the midst of a green field, the dew on his old
coat. In Scotland it is altogether different. You have soured the naturally
excellent disposition of ghosts and goblins.9
A few years after the first appearance of this piece in the Scots Observer, Yeats
visited the North of Ireland and lectured to the ‘loyal minority’ in Belfast
on faeries, a difficult enterprise at the best of times. Apparently it was not
very well received. Yeats later remarked: ‘I have been away in County Down,
looking almost in vain among its half-Scotch people for the legends I find so
plentiful in the West’.10 Whether half Scottish or half-Scotch, the inhabitants
of the North had a problem with the kind of Celtic mysticism expounded by
Yeats.
Liam McIlvanney has shown how the work of Robert Burns was intimately
bound up with the Ulster-Scots Literary Revival of the 1790s.11 If Ulster had
a Romantic streak, it owed it to Burns, so it is no surprise that Burns was the
basis of Yeats’s admiration for, and antipathy towards, Scotland. Burns occupied
an awkward place in Irish culture, and not just for Yeats. Even admirers were
unsure if the ploughboy-playboy could or should be imitated by Irish writers.
Yeats often invoked Burns as a breath of fresh air bursting out of the gloom, and
was especially fond of comparing J. M. Synge to Burns in terms of their use of
dialect and earthy topics. But at other times Burns is resisted and represented
as a writer of limits. According to Yeats, ‘the fruit of Robert Burns and Scott
with their lack of ideas, their external and picturesque views of life, has been
to create not a nation but a province with a sense of the picturesque . . . The
W. B. Yeats, Mythologies (London, 1959), 107 – 8.
Denis Donoghue (ed.), W. B. Yeats: Memoirs: The original unpublished text of the Autobiography
and the Journal (London, 1972), 45, fn. 6.
11
Liam McIlvanney, ‘Robert Burns and the Ulster-Scots Literary Revival of the 1790s’,
Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 4 (1999/2000), 2, 125 – 43.
9
10
165
external and picturesque or political writer leaves the strongest intellects of
their countries empty (and in the case of Scotland, England has crowded into
this emptiness), and is content to fill with kilts and bagpipes, newspapers and
guidebooks, the days of the least creative’.12
Yeats, like other Irish critics, envied Burns’s status and admired his language, but occasionally expressed doubts about the very popularity which at
other times he praised and envied. Other Irish commentators were wary of
the Scottish comparison. John Eglinton, writing in 1899 in Literary Ideals in
Ireland, observed:
[A] well-known Scotch Professor once said that Ireland was not a nation
because it had never had a Burns or a Bannockburn. It is, however, as
reasonable to think that these glorious memories of Scottish nationality
will form a drag on its further evolution as that the want of a peasant
poet, or of a recollection of having at least once given the Saxons a drubbing, will be fatal to an attempt to raise people above themselves in this
country by giving expression to latent ideals. Ireland must exchange the
patriotism which looks back for the patriotism which looks forward.13
Yeats wanted to champion Ireland’s peasant poets, Synge, the playwright Burns,
and William Carleton, the prose Burns, but he had misgivings too. Carleton
himself, in the preface to Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1830), had
written of avoiding ‘intolerable Scoto-Hibernic jargon’ (p. xi). D. P. Moran,
another Irish critic, cautioned against a wholesale buying into Burns and the
brogue:
[T]hough certain classes of ballad and lyric poetry can be written in
dialect, as Burns has proved, you cannot rise to dignity or poetry on
‘begors’ and ‘bedads’. There is something essentially mean about the
corrupt English of the Irish peasant, particularly when put into cold
print; it passes the power of man to write literature in it.14
Moran blamed Yeats for sponsoring ‘The Celtic Note’. Moran’s criticisms
Denis Donoghue (ed.), W. B. Yeats: Memoirs, 248.
John Eglinton, from Literary Ideals in Ireland (1899), cited in Seamus Deane (ed.) The
Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry, 1991), Vol. 2, 957.
14
Seamus Deane (gen ed.), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 Vols (Derry, 1991),
Vol 2, 555.
12
13
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Willy Maley
would apply to Synge, but Yeats wanted to defend Synge while acknowledging
the difficulty of writing in ‘dialect’. There is a long and involved debate around
the language question in Irish and Scottish literature. While Burns was often
invoked as a positive role model by Yeats, Edwin Muir held Yeats up as an
example for Scottish writers to follow. Muir argued that Yeats does more for
Irish literature by writing in English than Scottish writers do for Scotland by
writing in ‘dialect’.15
Synge, for Yeats, was Burns at his best. Yeats pointed out that while
‘Scotland left Burns in the Excise; the world has mocked her for it’, Ireland
must prize its writers, whatever language they chose.16 Defending William
Carleton against neglect and abuse, Yeats hoped that Ireland wouldn’t likewise
constrain its writers. But Burns was also for Yeats a universal writer. Moran had
urged Yeats to do for Ireland what Burns had done for Scotland. Yeats – though
he encouraged the comparison between Synge and Carleton and Burns – did
not do ‘dialect’. Though he liked to bend it like Beckett, Yeats preferred Posh.
Yeats saw Burns’s Irish following in this case as based on a hankering after
the obvious, the popular. Perhaps the finest and funniest illustration of Yeats’s
double take on Burns, half admiring, half envying, can be seen in the episode
I mentioned earlier. Ezra Pound had a laugh at Yeats’s efforts at reciting Burns.
‘Years ago’, says Pound,
Yeats was struggling with rhythms and saying they wouldn’t do. I got him
to read a little Burns aloud, telling him he cd. read no cadence but his
own . . . I had a half hour of unmitigated glee in hearing ‘Say ye bonnie
Alexander’ and ‘The Birks o Averfeldy’ keened, wailed with infinite difficulty and many pauses and restarts to The Wind Among the Reeds.17
His inability to recite Burns notwithstanding, Yeats imagined what he’d wish
for if granted an audience with the King of Faery: ‘I would say “I do not ask
even a fiftieth part of the popularity Burns has for his own people, but I would
like enough to help the imagination[s] that were most keen and subtle to think
of Ireland as a sacred land”.’18
Edwin Muir, Scott and Scotland: The Predicament of the Scottish Writer (Edinburgh, 1982;
1936), 111 – 12.
16
John Kelly, and Eric Domville (eds), The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Volume One
1865 – 1895 (Oxford, 1986), 206.
17
Daniel Albright, Quantum Poetics: Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and the science of modernism
(Cambridge, 1997), 148.
18
John Kelly, and Eric Domville (eds), The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Volume One
15
167
Yeats admitted his shortcomings when it came to dialect, but praised the
efforts of Synge and Lady Gregory – who wrote in an ‘Irish’ that was ‘as true
a dialect of English as the dialect that Burns wrote in’.19 In ‘What is Popular
Poetry’ Yeats could say: ‘Despite his expressive speech which sets him above
all other popular poets, [Burns] has the triviality of emotion, the poverty of
ideas, the imperfect sense of beauty of a poetry whose most typical expression
is in Longfellow’.20 Yet in his Nobel Prize speech Yeats rejoiced in Synge’s
ability to do for Ireland what Burns did for Scotland: ‘Burns himself could
not have more shocked a gathering of Scotch clergy than did he our players’.21 Burns, then, was a writer who divided Ireland, and divided Yeats too.
For while Yeats wanted to support the Irish tradition that drew on Burns, it
was not one that he himself could follow – and although he admired Burns’s
status he also resented it. I have argued elsewhere that a lot of this debate
about ‘dialect’ has to do with class and religion, and similar conclusions
can be drawn with regard to the ways in which Yeats shifted his ground on
Scotland and Ulster.22
Walter Scott is another major Scottish writer about whom Yeats had mixed
feelings. Yeats’s father – ‘Papa’ – read Redgauntlet to the young Yeats, and Yeats
later read Scott to his own children. Yeats, in Celtic mode, drew analogies
between ‘defeated’ races. The ‘Highlanders’, he said, were like the Irish, ‘of
one stock with ourselves’. But Scott was a shadow as well as a shaping influence. Yeats asserted that: ‘Scott made a single lowland Scottish dialect serve
for all Scotland’, and he resented the fact that Scott was seen as a national
and international writer while Irish authors like Synge and Lady Gregory were
viewed as parochial or provincial.23 The same combination of grudging respect
and admiration coupled with envy and disdain marks Yeats’s attitude to both
Burns and Scott. Roy Foster describes Yeats’s shift from Scottish models to
Irish mores with typical terseness: ‘His reading is related to his own early work;
Scott gives way to Sligo county histories’.24
1865 – 1895, 388.
William H. O’Donnell, (ed.), W. B. Yeats: Prefaces and Introductions (London, 1988), 225.
20
W. B Yeats, Essays and Introductions (London, 1961), 6.
21
Yeats, ‘The Irish Dramatic Movement’, Nobel Lecture 15 December 1923.
22
In ‘“Kilt by Kelt Shell Kithagain with Kinagain”: Joyce and Scotland’, in Derek
Attridge and Marjorie Howes (eds), Semi-Colonial Joyce.
23
John P. Frayne and Colton Johnson (eds). Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, 2 Vols
(London, 1975), II, 468.
24
R. F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: a life, I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865 – 1914 (New York, 1997), I,
530.
19
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Willy Maley
Robert Louis Stevenson fares rather better. Yeats is more positive about a
writer who is his contemporary. Stevenson wrote admiringly of Yeats’s work, and
Yeats returned the compliment. ‘I need hardly tell you’, he told Stevenson,
that your praise of ‘The Lake of Innisfree’ has given me great pleasure.
After all it is the liking or disliking of one’s fellow craftsmen, especially
of those who have attained the perfect expression one does but grope
for, which urges one to work on – else were it best to dream ones dreams
in silence. My grandfather a very passionate old retired sailor – quite the
reverse of literary – read ‘Treasure Iseland’ [sic] upon his death-bed with
infinite satisfaction. It is well nigh the only book I ever heard of him
reading. I wonder at the voice, which while delighting studious and
cloistered spirits, can yet hush into admiration such as he, much as I
wonder at that voice which stilled the waves of old.25
Again, what Yeats admires in Stevenson is what he found enviable in Burns
and Scott – the ability to cross over between privileged and popular audiences
and to ‘go global’. This is what Yeats wanted for Irish literature, but he felt
that Scotland took its ‘mature’ tradition for granted, while Irish critics failed
to appreciate the emerging apprentice work of Ireland. Crossing swords with
Professor Edward Dowden, Yeats bristled at being accused of endorsing literature ‘that raves of Brian Boru’. Yeats countered that none of the books on his
recommended reading list ‘“raves of Brian Boru” half as much as Burns did of
Bruce and Wallace, or has an “intellectual brogue” more “accentuated” than
the Scottish characteristics in Scott and Stevenson’.26 Dowden subscribed to
the Anglo-Irish tradition of Swift and his successors – to which of course Yeats
belonged – but Yeats said that those works ‘will be substitutes for the books I
have named only when the books of Hume are considered Scotch literature in
the same sense as the books of Burns and Barrie’.27 J. M. Barrie was another
Scottish writer who saw and supported the new Irish drama. But are we living
in Cloud Cuchulain Land, the Never Land of Peter Pan Celticism?
This brings me to two more minor Scottish figures that crossed Yeats’s
path: MacGregor Mathers, or Samuel Liddell Mathers, and William Sharp,
also known as Fiona Macleod. Yeats explains how he first met Synge in Paris,
John Kelly and Eric Domville (eds), The Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Volume One
1865 – 1895, 404.
26
Ibid., 440.
27
Ibid., 448.
25
169
and had a strange encounter with MacGregor Mathers – the Eminem of his
day – concerning Fiona Macleod:
I saw Mrs Sharpe [sic] the other day and know a great deal more about
the Fiona Macleod mystery. It is as I thought. Fiona Macleod was so
far as external perception could say a secondary personality induced in
Sharpe by the presence of a very beautiful unknown woman whom he
fell in love with. She, alas! has disappeared from everyone’s sight, no one
having set eyes on her except George Meredith who says she was the
most beautiful woman he ever saw. Whether there was more than this I
do not know but poor Mrs Sharpe, though generous and self-sacrificing
as I can see does not want to enlarge that unknown woman’s share. A
great deal, however, which Sharp used to give in letters as an account
of Fiona’s doings were she insists a kind of semi-allegorical description
of the adventures of his own secondary personality and its relation with
the primary self. For instance in one letter to me he had said ‘I will
leave your letter where Fiona will find it when she wakes’, and by this
he meant that the secondary personality when it awoke in him would
answer the letter which it certainly did in a much more impassioned
way than that of the rest of the letter. I don’t think there would be much
of all this in the official biography for when I said to Mrs Sharpe that
she should tell the whole truth, she answered ‘How can I! Other people are so much involved.’ She never talked quite openly about things,
except it being a secondary personality, but told things in a series of
hints and yet, at the same time, quite clearly. I noticed that each time
she said this personality was awakened in him by a beautiful person she
would add as if to lessen the effect, ‘and by beautiful scenery’. She was
evidently very fond of him and has sent me his birth date and her own
to find out how their horoscopes interlocked. I would be rather glad if
you would keep this letter, for I am fresh from seeing Mrs Sharp (I saw
her a week ago) and this will be a record. Put it in a safe place and I may
ask you for it again some day for it is a fragment of history. She told me
that the morning William Sharp died she heard visionary music and
indeed a good deal of one sort and another about the supernatural side
of his talent.28
Terry L. Meyers, The Sexual Tensions of William Sharp: A Study of the Birth of Fiona
Macleod, Incorporating Two Lost Works, ‘Ariadne In Naxos’ and ‘Beatrice’ (New York,
1996), 19 – 20.
28
170
Willy Maley
This is a bizarre passage – haunting, hallucinatory, hilarious. Did the Scots put
Yeats off Celticism, having helped put him onto it?
Some Ulster writers changed their names to move closer to Yeats’s vision,
but one Scottish writer went further. Yeats admired Fiona Macleod, and corresponded with her, before he found out that ‘she’ was in fact a ‘he’: William
Sharp, prominent critic, biographer, poet and Whitmaniac. In 1894 Sharp
assumed the persona of Fiona Macleod, and so began a split-level writing
career. Writing as Fiona Macleod, Sharp was able to get in touch with his
feminine side, which came in handy if you were Victorian and Scottish. As
Fiona, William published visionary Gaelic poetry, fiction and drama. She was
considered a better writer than the man who gave birth to her. Folklore was her
forte. Yeats said of her that she ‘had in her hands the keys of those gates of the
primeval world, which shut behind more successful races, when they plunged
into material progress’.29
Fiona was the Celtic Tigerlily who put the prim into primeval, but she got
on less well with Oscar Wilde than she did with Yeats. Isobel Murray argues
that Sharpe’s Children of To-morrow is a source for The Picture of Dorian Gray,
but whoever heard of a Scottish writer influencing an Irish one?30 In fact,
going back to Burns and Carleton, Edgeworth and Scott, there is a constant
two-way traffic. In Yeats, Fiona Macleod found a soul mate. He understood
‘The strain of life – the strain of double life’.31 Fiona was fond of quoting
Yeats to the effect that ‘the arts have become religious’, by which I assume
Yeats meant mythical and spiritual, though they remained ‘religious’ in other
ways. When Yeats first met William Sharp, before he had assumed the alter
ego of Fiona Macleod, he was not impressed: ‘I was introduced to Sharp of
the Sonnets of This Century and hated his red British face of flaccid contentment’.32 When Sharp went on to lead a double life, getting in touch with
his feminine side, in the form of the fair Fiona, Yeats warmed to him/her,
to the ‘secondary personality’ as he called it. Some contemporaries had even
surmised that Yeats was Fiona Macleod. Yeats had written to Sharp at one
point – in 1896 – urging an alliance between ‘Scotch Welsh and Irish Celts’.
Yeats, repulsed by Sharp’s ‘Britishness’, seduced by Fiona Macleod’s cod Celtic
femininity, eventually rejected both as two sides of the same (debased) coin.
Frayne and Johnson (eds), Uncollected Prose by W. B. Yeats, II, 45.
Isobel Murray, ‘Children of To-morrow: A Sharp Inspiration for Dorian Gray’, Durham
University Journal, n.s. 49 (1987), 1, 69 – 70.
31
Richard J. Finneran, George Mills Harper, and William M. Murphy (eds). Letters to
W. B. Yeats, 2 Vols., with the assistance of Alan B. Himber (New York, 1977), I, 52.
32
Donoghue (ed.), Memoirs, 129, fn. 1.
29
30
171
Lady Gregory famously looked back on the setting up of the Irish National
Theatre as an exercise in bad faith:
I think the word ‘Celtic’ was put in for the sake of Fiona Macleod, whose
plays however we never acted, though we used to amuse ourselves by
thinking of the call for ‘author’ that might follow one, and the possible
appearance of William Sharp in place of the beautiful woman he had
given her out to be, for even then we had little doubt they were one and
the same person. I myself never quite understood the meaning of the
‘Celtic Movement’, which we were said to belong to. When I was asked
about it, I used to say it was a movement meant to persuade the Scotch
to begin buying our books, while we continued not to buy theirs.33
There is nothing worn under the Kiltartan, it’s all in perfect working order. We
have come a long way from Yeats’s envious reaction to the popularity of Burns
and Scott to the superior taste of the Irish.
If Sharp was a Scotsman on the make, James Connolly was a different proposition, yet Sharp and Connolly were connected, as Murray Pittock explains:
‘By most measures of nationality, James Connolly was a Scot: described as
“Scotto-Hibernian” even in Dublin (where he came from Edinburgh at the age
of 28), he spoke with a Scots accent and named his daughter, born in 1907,
“Fiona” after William Sharp’s alter ego’.34 Yeats encountered Connolly in a
dramatic and memorable context, as he recounts in Autobiographies:
Is our Foundation Stone still unlaid when the more important streets
are decorated for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee?
I find Maud Gonne at her hotel talking to a young working-man
who looks very melancholy. She had offered to speak at one of the regular meetings of his Socialist society about Queen Victoria, and he has
summoned what will be a great meeting in the open air. She has refused
to speak, and he says that her refusal means his ruin, as nobody will
ever believe that he had any promise at all. When he has left without
complaint or anger, she gives me very cogent reasons against the openair meeting, but I can think of nothing but the young man and his look
of melancholy. He has left his address, and presently, at my persuasion,
she drives to his tenement, where she finds him and his wife and his
Harrington, Modern Irish Drama, 378 – 79.
Murray Pittock, Celtic Identity and the British Image (Manchester, 1999), 77.
33
34
172
Willy Maley
children crowded into a very small space – perhaps there was only one
room – and, moved by the sight, promised to speak. The young man is
James Connolly who, with Padraic Pearse, is to make the Insurrection
of 1916 and to be executed.
Yeats then describes being caught up in a street protest with Connolly and
reflects on whether he is implicated in the violence that follows:
Connolly carries in procession a coffin with the words ‘British Empire’
upon it, and police and mob fight for its ownership, and at last, that
the police may not capture it, it is thrown into the Liffey. And there are
fights between police and window-breakers, and I read in the morning
papers that many have been wounded; some two hundred heads have
been dressed at the hospitals; an old woman killed by baton blows, or
perhaps trampled under the feet of the crowd; and that two thousand
pounds’ worth of decorated plate-glass windows have been broken. I
count the links in the chain of responsibility, run them across my fingers, and wonder if any link there is from my workshop.35
After that Sharp exit, and the jettisoning of the Union Jack-draped coffin,
Hugh MacDiarmid brings us back to the majors. MacDiarmid enjoyed his
stay in Dublin in the summer of 1928. Although he chiefly admired Joyce,
MacDiarmid was grateful for the respect and support of Yeats.36 MacDiarmid
had an ulterior motive for exploiting connections with Yeats and other Irish
writers. After that Dublin trip he claimed that he was ‘able to make certain
arrangements which will help the Scots National Party to the Irish vote at the
General Election’.37 MacDiarmid scholars have recognised his role in ‘fighting Irish parochialism towards Scotland’, but I am not sure how successful
MacDiarmid was.38 I have written elsewhere on Joyce’s lasting antipathy to
Scotland39 but Yeats certainly did act as an advocate of MacDiarmid – much
more so than did Joyce, the writer MacDiarmid most admired. Yeats included
W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (London, 1966), 366 – 8.
Edwin Morgan, ‘James Joyce and Hugh MacDiarmid’, in W. J. McCormack and Alistair
Stead (eds), James Joyce and Modern Literature (London, 1982), 202 – 17.
37
Dorian Grieve, Owen Dudley Edwards and Alan Riach (eds), Hugh MacDiarmid: New
Selected Letters (Manchester, 2001), 34.
38
Ibid., xxvi – xxvii.
39
In ‘“Kilt by Kelt Shell Kithagain with Kinagain”: Joyce and Scotland’, in Derek
Attridge and Marjorie Howes (eds), Semi-Colonial Joyce.
35
36
173
four of MacDiarmid’s poems in the 1936 Oxford Book of Modern Verse. Yeats
knew that a lot of Scottish input had gone into the making of modern Ireland,
in terms of writers and thinkers, and in terms of the Scottish influence in the
North in the wake of the Ulster Plantation. But he was ambivalent about both
those Celtic connections.
In the last few years, critics like Edna Longley, Owen Dudley Edwards, and
John Wilson Foster have focused on the ‘North’ as key to understanding the
Irish-Scottish avenue or impasse.40 Vexed issues of class, religion and language
as well as an attachment to empire, affect the Irish writer’s attitude to Ulster
and to Scotland. According to John Wilson Foster: ‘Social class and religious
denomination would have early instilled in Yeats a distaste for the bulk of his
co-religionists in what in his lifetime became Northern Ireland’.41 Yeats wanted
to keep the baby of Burns but throw out the bathwater of bigotry, though he
arguably succumbed to some doom and gloom of his own. Again, according
to Foster:
Yeats wished Ulster to mean an inspired peasant Carleton and an aristocratic Ferguson in the real world, and Cuchulain in the unreal world,
a place that had produced the figures that mattered most to Yeats: peasant, artist, aristocrat and hero. But such a view of modern Ulster could
not be sustained and Yeats gave up on the north as a bad job. Scots
Ulster, Presbyterian Ulster, became indeed a kind of antithetical cultural
self.42
Yeats’s discomfort with the North goes back well before Partition. Ulster is
caught up in his mind with a negative notion of Scotland, or perhaps Scotland
is caught up in his mind with a problematic perception of the North. Either
way, Yeats gave up on both as bad jobs. Yeats defended Synge’s use of ‘dialect’
but when the Ulster-born Daniel Deeney used some ‘Northern’ pronunciation
in his 1900 volume, Peasant Lore from Gaelic Ireland, Yeats was less sympathetic. It is John Wilson Foster’s contention that Yeats’s Ireland excluded the
Edna Longley, ‘Including the North’, Text & Context 3 (1988), 17 – 24; Owen Dudley
Edwards, ‘Scotland, Ulster, and You’, in Ian S. Wood (ed.), Scotland and Ulster
(Edinburgh, 1994), 173 – 82; John Wilson Foster, ‘Getting the North: Yeats and
Northern Nationalism’, in Warwick Gould and Edna Longley (eds), That Accusing
Eye: Yeats and His Irish Reader, Yeats Annual 12 (1996), 180 – 212
41
Foster, ‘Getting the North’, in Warwick Gould and Edna Longley (eds), That Accusing
Eye: Yeats and his Irish Reader, Yeats Annual 12, 180 – 212, 181 – 2.
42
Ibid., 183.
40
174
Willy Maley
North. The Faeries had been driven out of Ulster as well as Scotland. As Foster
says, ‘many a celebrated Southerner . . . found the [North] galling’.43
Joyce could be added to the list. In Ireland, the Scottish North did not
measure up to the English South. This is about more than snobbery, but not
much more. Edna Longley finesses the parting in the Celtic fringe: ‘In fact,
Joyce and Yeats shared an anti-Ulster prejudice with implications for IrishScottish literary intercourse. This prejudice marks regional and religious (not
just Catholic/Protestant but also Anglican/Presbyterian) partitions in Ireland’.44
Yeats hoped that the South would come to stand as a good example to the
North. In 1924, speaking in the Irish Senate, he declared: ‘I have no hope of
seeing Ireland united in my time, or of seeing Ulster won in my time; but I
believe it will be won in the end, and not because we fight it, but because we
govern this country well. We can do that, if I may be permitted as an artist and
writer to say so, by creating a system of culture which will represent the whole
of this country’.45 Yeats really was away with the faeries. But being away with
the faeries – or blue-sky thinking – has its uses. In his study of MacDiarmid,
Alan Riach remarks: ‘A homogeneous image of Ireland was proposed by the
Celtic Revival and the Anglo-Irish Yeats’.46 It could be argued that Yeats tried
hard to incorporate conflicting elements of Irish culture into a single vision.
He certainly developed a very gloomy and one-sided view of Scotland, seeing
in it a fulcrum of all that was conservative, Unionist, imperialist: in short,
‘British’. Yeats had warned the South not to get too Catholic if it wanted to get
the North. He might have warned the North, with an eye on the ‘loyal minority’, not to get too Protestant.
The same prejudice that made Scotland a hard sell in Ireland and especially the South – because of the North – is what makes it so easy for Scottish
critics to plump for stateless Joyce over Free State Yeats, the latter dismissed, either unsubtly in Terry Eagleton’s terms in his ‘Ballad of English
Literature’ – ‘Willy Yeats was a fascist’ – or more delicately in the slightly subtler but no less problematic terms of critics like Seamus Deane and George
Watson.47 Yeats gets short shrift, or shorter shrift than Joyce. The fact that
Ibid, 183.
Edna Longley, ‘The Whereabouts of Literature’, in Gerard Carruthers, David Goldie
and Alastair Renfrew (eds), Beyond Scotland: New Contexts for Twentieth-Century Scottish
Literature (Amsterdam and New York, 2004), 151 – 65 [157].
45
John Wilson Foster, ‘Getting the North’, 184 – 5.
46
Alan Riach, Hugh MacDiarmid’s Epic Poetry (Edinburgh, 1991), 88.
47
Seamus Deane, Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature, 1880 – 1980 (London,
1985); G. J. Watson, Irish Identity and the Literary Revival: Synge, Yeats, Joyce and O’Casey
43
44
175
Yeats was a Protestant who trailed his coat of many colours through the mud
and blood of politics has nothing to do with it, just as the reason the Dublin
audiences rioted against plays of Synge and O’Casey was nothing to do with
their religion. It is all objective and above board. Nothing to see here: no faeries or demons. Scotland gets a bad press in Ireland because of Ulster, and a
bad press in the South because of the North. Yeats gets looked at sideways and
with suspicion because of the very North at which he looked sideways and
suspicious. Scotland and Ulster get brushed with the same tartan. In a sense,
Yeats is the North.
Recently, postcolonial readings of Yeats have gained ground, most famously that of Edward Said, who read Yeats’s Celticism in relation to negritude.48
Yeats’s Irishness in Said’s account was set against a monolithic Britishness. Said
had little to say about Scotland, and like most postcolonial critics tended to
see ‘Britain’ as one flat homogenous and ahistorical whole, interchangeable
with ‘England’, but Jahan Ramazani, in ‘Is Yeats a Postcolonial Poet?’, argues
that: ‘Yeats is completely out of luck if the postcolonial era dawned when the
Republic of Ireland was officially founded in 1949 or, for that matter, when
the partition might one day be dissolved between the Six Counties of the
North and the lower Twenty-Six’.49 According to Marjorie Howes: ‘Yeats and
postcolonial studies conducted some of their most sustained and important
arguments with the Enlightenment through its opposite: a romantic culturalism’.50 Howes goes on to argue, among other things that ‘September 1913’ is
a Protestant poem born out of a growing frustration with Catholic Ireland.51
My argument here is that Yeats slowly relinquished his wish to build bridges
between Ireland and Scotland and, because of the Scottish legacy in the North,
and its ‘half Scottish’ people, this meant abandoning his unionism. If Howes
wanted to explore Yeats’s Romanticism she might usefully have drawn on his
attitude to Burns and Scott.
The man who famously declared that there was ‘more enterprise / In walking naked’52 had a rude awakening on the fashion front at the height of his
Celticism:
(Washington, D.C.,1994; 1979).
Edward Said, ‘Yeats and Decolonization’, in Seamus Deane (ed.), Nationalism,
Colonialism, and Literature, (Minneapolis, 1992), 69 – 95.
49
Jahan Ramazani, ‘Is Yeats a Postcolonial Poet?’, Raritan 17 (1998), 3, 64 – 89; 66.
50
Howes, ‘Postcolonial Yeats: Culture, Enlightenment, and the Public Sphere’, Field Day
Review 2 (2006), 55 –73; 55.
51
Ibid., 66 – 70.
52
Yeats, Collected Poems, 142.
48
176
Willy Maley
On the issue of clothing, the Irish Irelander stood firm. The Leader urged
the wearing of Irish cloth, tailored in Ireland and Yeats attempted to follow this model: ‘I believed myself dressed according to public opinion,
until a letter of apology from my tailor informed me that “It takes such
a long time getting Connemara cloth as it has to come all the way from
Scotland”’ . . . Yeats’s public engagement with the dress question came
at the Dublin Pan-Celtic Congress of August 1901, when the issue of
an Irish national costume was debated: Yeats temporised, arguing for
the very gradual adoption of national dress; he pointed out that they all
had to cope with the reactions of ‘the small boy’, who could be evaded
if they ‘started first in evening dress’. Irish Irelanders did not advocate a
national costume.53
Ireland got from Scotland more than Connemara cloth. It got a key component of its colonial make-up, and not just its romantic culturalism, but
also its lasting bastion of Britishness. Including the North – if not getting the
North – means thinking about the Scottish contribution and the Scottish
undercurrents in Irish life.
According to George Boyce, ‘Irish nationalism in the nineteenth century
was engaged not only in political agitation; it was concerned also to make
good its claim that it had a fundamental right to exist, and was not, as its
arch-enemy A. J. Balfour claimed, merely a congeries of grievance, with less
foundation in history than the nationalism of Scotland, that noble, patriotic and yet contented member of the United Kingdom’.54 Boyce underplays
connections between Ulster and Scotland until his conclusion, when he comments: ‘This is not intended as a piece of advice to Ulster Unionists that they
should seek to invent a culture, or embark on a search for a Yeats of their own
(Robert Burns, perhaps, who could combine the myth of Ulster Scottishness
with an excellent literary pedigree?)’55 For a time, Ulster had a Yeats of its
own: Yeats. But the Scottishness of a political hate-figure like Alasdair Balfour
did not help build bridges between the North and South of Ireland. As for
‘the myth of Ulster Scottishness’, the Ulster Plantation and partition are not
wished away so easily.
Deirdre Toomey, ‘Moran’s Collar: Yeats and Irish Ireland’, in Gould and Longley (eds),
That Accusing Eye, 45 – 83, 49.
54
George Boyce, ‘”They Have Got Yeats”: Asking some more of the right questions
about Literature and Politics in Ireland’, Text & Context 3 (1988), 39 – 54, 43.
55
Ibid., 50.
53
177
The half Scottish North, like its whole Scottish neighbour, may in one
jaundiced vision look like a faerie-free zone, intolerant of others, and more
prone to gritty realism than cultured romanticism, but the big picture is arguably a less gloomy one than that painted by Yeats, and less galling too. The
Irish-Scottish connection is a vexed one, and the North is where the lines of
conflict are most tightly drawn. In his open-ended conclusion to an important
essay entitled ‘Scotland, Ulster, and You’, Owen Dudley Edwards observes:
‘Neither Ulster nor Scotland is the thing it seems to be, and we have to make
long journeys to understand home’.56
This essay has offered some snapshots, images or instances of Yeats and
Scotland, portraits in plaid, moments to mull: first, Yeats’s father, reading Sir
Walter Scott’s Redgauntlet to his twelve-year old son. Have you ever seen such
cruelty? Is this the key to Yeats’s adult antipathy to Scotland? Second, Yeats’s
grandfather, an old sailor reading his first book on his deathbed. The book?
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Then arguably one of the most
influential Scots in an Irish context, James Connolly, an ordinary ‘workingman’, as Yeats portrays him, as he persuades Maud Gonne to visit Connolly at
his modest lodgings, and then gets caught up in a street protest that ends in
violence after the Edinburgh-born future Irish martyr throws a coffin bearing
the words ‘British Empire’ into the Liffey. Yeats wonders if he was somehow
to blame for his charged advocacy of Connolly. Next up, Yeats standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Hugh MacDiarmid on a Dublin street in the wee small
hours of the morning, after a night on the tiles. What are they doing? Playing
see-who-can-pee-the-highest. ‘I crossed swords with him’, as MacDiarmid put
it, a living stream that ended in the gutter. Then comes the butt of someone
else’s joke. Yeats, under instruction from Ezra Pound, tries to recite Burns, fails
miserably much to his auditor’s amusement, proving to Pound in the process
that Yeats, deaf to other cadences, can scan no verse but his own. The final
image in these fleeting glimpses is of Yeats, at a time when Irish national dress
was being debated, proud as punch of his own habits in this regard. Until he
gets a letter from his tailor telling him good Connemara cloth takes time to get
delivered these days, as it has to come all the way from Scotland. Dressing in
Scots garb while searching for something distinctively Irish – that’s a suitable
way of thinking about Yeats and Scotland.
Edwards, ‘Scotland, Ulster, and You’, in Ian S. Wood (ed.), Scotland and Ulster, 182.
56
Reshaping Scotland: Ireland, Europe and the Interwar
Scottish Literary Renaissance Movement
What made the early twentieth-century literary renaissance outstanding among
Scottish cultural movements was the belief of those involved that any revival
in the nation’s artistic culture could not be separated from regeneration in its
social, economic and political life. This was something quite new in Scottish
affairs, ideologically different from the turn-of-the-century ‘renascence’ associated with Patrick Geddes and that of the Celtic revival; and different too
from earlier patriotic attempts by Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson
to preserve in their writing something of a vanishing Scots language and its
traditions. In contrast, the objective of the interwar reformers, in literature and
in everyday life, was to create a Scotland which would throw off its acquired
dependent status as a North British province and move forward to retake its
place as a self-determining European nation. For engagement with Europe,
and with the artistic and intellectual ideas of the modern period, was an equal
priority for these interwar writers. Nationalism, internationalism and modernity were seen as complementary and interactive parts of an ambitious national
renewal project.
In addition, the recent history of Ireland, with its political achievement
of self-determination in the Irish Free State and its literary successes through
the poetry of Yeats, the Abbey Theatre and the contemporary fiction of James
Joyce, provided an inspirational exemplar for many activists; and during the
interwar years, this Irish inspiration was adapted to suit the changing needs
of the Scottish context. For example, before his conversion to literary Scots as
the language of a modern revival, C. M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid) looked
to Ireland for validation of a literary revival conducted through the medium
of the English language, arguing in the Aberdeen Free Press in December 1921
that ‘Synge, Yeats, and other great Irish writers found no difficulty in expressing themselves in an English which they yet made distinctively Irish’. At the
same time he attacked what he called the ‘perfervids’ of the London Burns
Club and their newly established Vernacular Circle which aimed to promote
the use of the Scots language in speech and writing. At this point, Grieve had
ambitions to lead an avant-garde, European-influenced revival and he consid-
180
ered that the Vernacular Circle’s attempt ‘to create a Doric “boom” just now
or even to maintain the existing Vernacular cult in anything like its present
tendencies’ could be seen only as ‘a gross disservice to Scottish life and letters’.1 Even as late as 5 August 1922, a few weeks before the launch of his
Scottish Chapbook periodical on 22 August and his reincarnation in its third
issue as the Scots-language poet Hugh MacDiarmid, he was still insisting on
a Scottish literary revival through the medium of English and looking to the
Irish for support. Writing this time in the Dunfermline Press, he emphasised
that such an English-language revival ‘would be no more English in spirit than
the literature of the Irish Literary Revival, most of which was written in the
English language, was English in spirit’.2 In its first issue, the manifesto of the
Scottish Chapbook proclaimed an intention to ‘bring Scottish Literature into
closer touch with current European tendencies in technique and ideation’, but
it is noticeable also that, despite Grieve’s recent Dunfermline Press article, the
attitude towards the Scots language appears to have softened a little. Now the
‘campaign of the Vernacular Circle of the London Burns Club for the revival
of the Doric’ is included among the activities to be given support. By February
1923 when, as Hugh MacDiarmid, Grieve had proved through a modernistic lyric such as ‘The Watergaw’ that an avant-garde poetry could indeed
be written in Scots, James Joyce has replaced Yeats as the Irish model, with
the Chapbook’s editorial proclaiming that ‘we have been enormously struck
by the resemblance – the moral resemblance – between Jamieson’s Etymological
Dictionary of the Scottish language and James Joyce’s Ulysses. A vis comica
that has not yet been liberated lies bound by desuetude and misappreciation
in the recesses of the Doric: and its potential uprising would be no less prodigious, uncontrollable, and utterly at variance with conventional morality
than was Joyce’s tremendous outpouring’. And in March 1923, Ireland and
Europe come together as inspirational forces when the Russian Dostoevsky
joins the Irish Joyce as a symbol of the new linguistic potential to be found in
Scots, with the Vernacular now being seen as ‘a vast storehouse of just the very
peculiar and subtle effects which modern European literature is assiduously
seeking’.3
C. M. Grieve, letters of 13 December 1921 and 27 January 1922, published in Aberdeen
Free Press 15 December 1921 and 30 January 1922; see also Margery Palmer McCulloch
(ed.), Modernism and Nationalism: Literature and Society in Scotland 1918 – 1939 (Glasgow,
2004), 21 – 23. For convenience of access, quotations will also be referenced where
relevant from this collection of primary source documents.
2
C. M. Grieve, Dunfermline Press 5 August 1922, 6; Modernism and Nationalism, 23.
3
The Chapbook Programme, Scottish Chapbook inaugural issue August 1922 and subsequent
1
Reshaping Scotland
181
Although Joyce was to remain a literary and linguistic inspiration to
MacDiarmid himself, culminating in the long ‘vision of world language’
poem In Memoriam James Joyce, published in 1955 but rooted in the 1930s,
the Irish influence on Scottish cultural affairs shifted in the later 1920s and
early 1930s to a more general preoccupation with the Celtic heritage of the
Scottish Highlands and a shared Gaelic language; and, among some activists,
to the possibility of adopting a Celtic identity for a regenerated Scotland as a
whole. Whether those attracted to the Celtic identity idea saw it as an imaginative symbol or – as Ruaridh Erskine of Marr argued in his book Changing
Scotland – saw the adoption of the Gaelic language throughout Scotland as a
marker of an identity distinct from England, all were united in their insistence
that this new Celtic revival would have no connection with the late nineteenth-century Celtic revival promoted by William Sharp and his alter ego
Fiona Macleod. Lyra Celtica, an anthology of Scottish and Irish Gaelic poetry
edited in 1896 by Sharp’s wife Elizabeth with an Introduction and Notes by
Sharp himself, was reprinted in 1924, thus bringing it into back into currency
alongside the new ideas about the reshaping of Scotland. However, Sharp’s
belief in ‘the re-birth of the Celtic genius in the brain of Anglo-Celtic poets
and the brotherhood of dreamers’ and his characterisation, via Mathew Arnold
and Ossian, of the Celts as a people ‘who went forth to the war, but they always
fell’,4 were not positions acceptable to the new Celticists, as one angry letter in the correspondence pages of the Scottish Educational Journal in January
1926 made clear. Reminding readers that ‘it was a Celt who acted as tutor to
Julius Caesar’, Donald A. Mackenzie from the Black Isle provided a roll-call of
his distinguished countrymen, among them explorers, statesman and military
men as well as the geologists Hugh Miller and Sir Roderick Murchison and
the ‘great translator’ Sir Thomas Urquhart. For this modern Black Isle Celt,
‘the nineteenth century nonsense about the “Celtic temperament”, the “Celtic
gloom” and “Celtic dreamers” should be flung into the nearest ashbin with
other rubbish’.5
What was perceived as being more relevant to the needs of contemporary Celticists was Daniel Corkery’s The Hidden Ireland, published in 1924,
a book which drew parallels between Irish and Scottish Highland Clearances
issues; 1.7 February 1923, 183; 1.8 March 1923, 210. Modernism and Nationalism, xii,
27 – 28.
4
William Sharp, ‘Introduction’, Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry
(1896: Edinburgh, 1924), xxxv, xliii.
5
Donald Mackenzie, ‘A Celt’s Protest’, Scottish Educational Journal 15 January 1926, 77 – 8.
Modernism and Nationalism, 276.
182
and argued for a national and a vernacular literature as opposed to traditions
derived from the classical Renaissance, an influence Corkery saw as inimical
to the development of an indigenous culture. Such a view fitted well with
the new emphasis in Scotland on the importance of both Scots and Gaelic,
while Corkery’s discussion of the Irish aisling tradition provided MacDiarmid
in particular with background material for the Celtic sections of To Circumjack
Cencrastus, the long poem which in 1930 followed A Drunk Man Looks at the
Thistle.
Although he was not himself a Gaelic speaker, the Highland novelist Neil
M. Gunn was also a keen defender of Scotland’s Celtic heritage, drawing for
his imaginative recreations of Highland life not only on recent Scottish history but on Corkery, on the Irish folk legends of Finn MacCoul and on the
Celtic material in Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough which was re-issued
in a one volume edition abridged by the author himself in 1922. Gunn was
positive about developments in Ireland, believing that Dublin could provide
Scotland with the motivation to work for ‘the continuance of a living Gaelic
spirit’.6 Gunn is best known for his fiction writing, but during the 1930s in
particular his factual investigations of economic and social conditions in the
Highlands, published in articles in the Scots Magazine under the editorship
of J. B. Salmond, brought these conditions to a wider audience, interacting
with and corroborating other Highland studies of the time. Other writers took
up the question of the decline of the Gaelic language, with Fionn MacColla,
himself a Gaelic learner, pointing the Scots towards Wales for an active policy
to halt decline. MacColla’s article ‘Welshing the Scottish Race’ was published
in the Free Man in March 1933 and this periodical, independent of party
affiliations but sympathetic to the movement for a new Scotland, frequently
provided a platform in the early 1930s for discussions of the situation of Gaelic,
with contributions from well-known language activists such as Erskine of Marr
and from pseudonymous contributors who advocated the teaching of Gaelic in
both Highland and Lowland schools. Had there been the political will and the
governmental power to put even some of these language proposals into action,
then we might not today be looking towards the demise of Gaelic as a spoken
language. In the interwar period, however, while the Irish experience might
have encouraged political aspirations and inspired practical investigations of a
Celtic Scottish Highland region more often ignored by Lowlanders, without
Dane McNeil [Neil M. Gunn], ‘President of Eire: The True Value of Tradition’,
Scots Magazine 29 June 1938, 180; reprinted in A. McCleery (ed.), Landscape and Light
(Aberdeen, 1987), 187.
6
Reshaping Scotland
183
a considerable measure of political self-determination it was well-nigh impossible to put positive proposals into action and so effect change.
In the artistic sphere also, the practical difficulties of attempting to adopt
a Celtic identity were significant. MacDiarmid’s To Circumjack Cencrastus is
the outstanding example here with its attempt to substitute the ‘Brightness
of Brightness’ of the Irish aisling tradition for a Lowland Scots language and
Muse. In the end, the Cencrastus poet has to admit defeat with his acknowledgement that:
Fain through Burns’ clay MacMhaigstir’s fire
To glint within me ettled.
It stirred, alas, but couldna kyth,
Prood, elegant and mettled.7
Yet, despite his lack of competence in the necessary Gaelic and his inability
to move his own poetic identity into a Celtic context, for MacDiarmid the
‘Gaelic Idea’ remained a ‘great creative idea’, ‘a dynamic myth’, as he described
it in the essay ‘The Caledonian Antisyzygy and the Gaelic Idea’, published in
the Modern Scot in 1931. As early as 1923, he had written in the Dunfermline
Press of the need to recover and teach Gaelic as well as Scots and thus encourage the kind of literature in each that might have developed had the influence
of English not driven both to the margins. As editor of the Golden Treasury
of Scottish Poetry, published in 1940, he, unusually for the time, included a
number of poems translated from the Gaelic ‘with the assistance [. . .] of
Mr Somhairle Maclean’, some of which he himself had adapted.8 That we now
take it for granted that the tradition of ‘Scottish Poetry’ means poetry in all three
of Scotland’s historical languages is to a large extent due to the renewed interest
in exploring Scotland’s Celtic heritage during the interwar period, an interest
fuelled by what was seen as the success of Ireland in achieving self-determination and cultural realisation. Even if the everyday condition of Ireland itself
was not as paradisal as the Scottish reformers in their imaginations believed it
to be, politically and culturally the example of Ireland provided them with an
inspirational vision of what might be.
Hugh MacDiarmid, To Circumjack Cencrastus in A. J. Aitken (ed.), The Complete Poems of
Hugh MacDiarmid (London, 1978), 225.
8
C. M. Grieve, ‘The Caledonian Antisyzygy and the Gaelic Idea’, Modern Scot 2.2/2.4
Summer / Winter 1931; reprinted in Duncan Glen (ed.), Selected Essays of Hugh
MacDiarmid (London, 1969), 56 – 74; Hugh MacDiarmid (ed.), The Golden Treasury of
Scottish Poetry (London, 1946; 1940), x.
7
184
And what about the European dimension of the revival movement?
Scottish artistic culture had of course already been in ‘closer touch with current
European tendencies in technique and ideation’9 in the early years of the century when the artists Margaret and Francis Macdonald were exhibiting with
Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Herbert MacNair at the Vienna Secession
Exhibitions; when J. D. Fergusson was painting in the south of France under
the influence of Cubism and the Fauve movement; and wealthy Glasgow
businessmen and art dealers such as Alexander Reid were collecting French
Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, thus bequeathing a fine legacy
to Kelvingrove Art Gallery. In the visual arts at least, Scotland in the pre-1914
period had the European dimension to its culture which the interwar literary revival movement sought to recover. And although World War One made
direct contact with continental Europe difficult, European artistic and intellectual ideas continued to be disseminated in Britain as a whole through books
and periodicals.
The New Age, edited in London by A. R. Orage, was an especially fruitful source of cultural information for autodidacts such as Edwin Muir and
MacDiarmid. Both became contributors to the magazine which also provided MacDiarmid with a model for his own periodicals, the Scottish Nation in
particular. Muir’s first book, We Moderns, published in 1918 under the pseudonym of Edward Moore, began life as a series of aphorisms or short essays in
the New Age and is notable for the way in which it communicates modernity
while simultaneously struggling against it. Muir and MacDiarmid were both
attracted to Dostoevsky, ‘this great genius who is beginning to permeate our
lives so curiously’, as Virginia Woolf described him in 1917; and both were
also influenced by the philosophy of Nietzsche: Muir as a means of overcoming
personal tragedies after his family’s move from Orkney to Glasgow in the early
years of the century; MacDiarmid in relation to his mission to effect national
self-determination, arguing in his Scottish Chapbook ‘Causerie’ that Nietzsche’s
‘Become what you are’ must be the slogan of a Scottish literary revival.10
From the beginning of the revival movement, therefore, Europe was not
merely a potential inspiration but already an actual presence in the minds
and activities of those who were to become the leading literary figures of
the interwar period. Of all the Scottish Renaissance writers, Edwin Muir was
probably the one most immediately involved with Europe, both in his life and
The Chapbook Programme, Modernism and Nationalism, xii.
Virginia Woolf, ‘More Dostoevsky’, Times Literary Supplement 22 February 1917, 91; C.
M. Grieve, Scottish Chapbook 1.8 March 1923, 24; Modernism and Nationalism 162, 174.
9
10
Reshaping Scotland
185
in his poetry. As a result of a contract with the American Freeman magazine
after the success of We Moderns, he and his wife Willa were able to travel on
the continent in the early 1920s, thus adding personal experience to knowledge derived from reading. Their stay in Germany and Austria at this time
introduced Edwin to the poetry of Hölderlin, an interest which remained
life-long. He was the first critic to introduce Hölderlin to an English-speaking
readership through his article on the German poet in MacDiarmid’s Scottish
Nation periodical in September 1923. As a result of this first European journey, the Muirs began to earn their living by translating from German, their
translations including the fiction of Franz Kafka and Hermann Broch’s trilogy about the disintegration of Europe, Die Schlafwandler (The Sleepwalkers).
As with his earlier contact with Hölderlin’s poetry, contact with the work of
Kafka and Broch had its influence on Muir’s own writing, although his poetic imagery of lost ways and obscure journeys was recognisably ‘Kafkaesque’
before he encountered Kafka’s fiction. He was strongly affected by the ideas
in Broch’s trilogy and by Broch’s need to flee Nazi Germany, when he stayed
for a time with the Muirs in St Andrews. Similarly, Muir’s later wartime work
with European servicemen and refugees in Edinburgh in the 1940s and the
harrowing stories they brought with them fed into poetry collections such as
The Narrow Place and The Voyage. Muir’s late poetry in The Labyrinth and One
Foot in Eden was again influenced in imagery and idea by his contact with
Europe: by his experiences in Czechoslovakia after the end of the war when
he was sent to Prague by the British Council; and by his subsequent, and
happier, period of employment at the British Institute in Rome. Although
such experiences followed after the principal interwar period of the Scottish
Renaissance movement, they show the continuing importance to a writer
such as Muir of his early European influences.
Others too experienced the influence of Europe in the period after World
War One. MacDiarmid was always up-to-date with current artistic and
intellectual ideas, many of which found their way into his long poem of 1926
A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, together with adaptations of European
poetry. His Scots-language lyrics demonstrate formally the combined influence
of Symbolist practices and Ezra Pound’s insistence on a clear, hard image.
MacDiarmid admired the French poets Paul Valéry and Stéphane Mallarmé,
writing at least two essays on the former and quoting Mallarmé’s dictum:
‘Ce n’est pas avec des idées qu’on fait des vers, c’est avec des mots’ – a maxim
that on the surface at least seemed to fit with his own insistence in the Penny
Wheep poem ‘Gairmscoile’ that ‘it’s soon’ no’ sense that faddoms the herts
186
o’ men’.11 The musician Francis George Scott had been interested in avantgarde European composers such as Schoenberg since the pre-World War One
period and the settings of MacDiarmid’s Scots lyrics he composed in the early
1920s show the influence of modernist musical forms. In painting, William
McCance and his wife Agnes Miller Parker, although working in England in
the interwar period, were drawn into the Scottish movement, supporting the
idea of a national but modern new Scottish art. William McCance’s work
in particular shows the influence of the French Cubists and the machineoriented compositions of Fernand Léger.
In addition to such specific interests and influences, awareness of the new
psychological ideas of Freud and Jung is present explicitly or implicitly in much
of the best writing of the period by both male and female writers, as is Bergson’s
writing on duration and memory and Proust’s fictional representation of this
in À la recherche du temps perdu. In a late essay, written in 1962, Neil Gunn
remembered ‘reading the Parisian magazine Transition in the Highlands when
James Joyce’s “Work in Progress” was appearing in its pages’, while Catherine
Carswell had written on ‘Proust’s Women’ as early as 1923.12 It is a Frenchman,
Professor Denis Saurat, friend of the Muirs, F. G. Scott and MacDiarmid, who
is usually credited with giving the literary revival movement its name through
his essay ‘Le groupe de “la Renaissance Écossaise”’, published in the Revue
Anglo-Americaine in 1924 – although Grieve / MacDiarmid had himself used
the phrase ‘Scottish Renascence’ in a comparison with the Belgian Literary
Revival in the first issue of his Scottish Chapbook in 1922. And in contrast
to the contemporary, avant-garde European connections described above,
Alexander Gray’s Scots-language translations of German and Danish ballads
and folk song made manifest a shared European folk tradition which stretched
back into the pre-print world.
While the 1920s were on the whole dominated by the literature and
language debates of the literary revival movement, in the later years of the
decade and in the 1930s discussion turned more and more to the condition
of Scotland and to economic, social and political affairs through periodical
articles and books such as George Malcolm Thomson’s Caledonia and Scotland:
That Distressed Area, Andrew Dewar Gibb’s Scotland in Eclipse, Edwin Muir’s
C. M. Grieve, ‘Paul Valéry’, New Age 1 December 1927, 54, Modernism and Nationalism,
181; Hugh MacDiarmid, ‘Gairmscoile’, Complete Poems, 74.
12
Neil M. Gunn, ‘Scottish Renaissance’, Scottish Field, August 1962, 34, Landscape and
Light, 97 – 98; Catherine Carswell, ‘Proust’s Women’ in Marcel Proust: An English
Tribute (London,1923), 66 – 77; Moderism and Nationalism, 195 – 98.
11
Reshaping Scotland
187
Scottish Journey, David Cleghorn Thomson’s Scotland in Quest of her Youth and
many others. As mentioned earlier, this was also an important period for the
investigation of Highland decline and the decline of the Gaelic language. In a
way this deluge of writing about the condition of Scotland – even if many of
its findings were negative – could be seen as confirming a considerable degree
of success in the literature-based revival of the 1920s. Many of these ‘condition
of Scotland’ books emanated from London publishers and in October 1933,
for example, the Spectator magazine announced an editorial policy of regular
coverage of Scottish matters because ‘developments are in progress in Scotland
that are far too little understood or discussed outside Scotland’. While some of
these ‘developments’ were literary – ‘the cultivation of Gaelic and the conscious
development of a modern Scottish literature are movements demanding not
only observation but discussion’ – others included the growing concern about
the economic and social governance of the country.13 Scottish affairs generally
appeared to have moved into a higher position on the British agenda as a consequence of the literary revival and its post-North British objectives.
Yet, with MacDiarmid in Whalsay for much of the 1930s and the small
magazines he had initiated in the 1920s having ceased publication, it might
seem as if in Scotland itself the literary renaissance had entered a quieter phase.
On the other hand, in the early 1930s in particular, the Modern Scot, edited
in St Andrews by the American James Whyte, took over the avant-garde role
played earlier by Grieve/MacDiarmid’s periodicals, re-emphasising the complementary connection between nationalism and internationalism and declaring
its intention to strengthen contacts with Europe directly by publishing translations of works by contemporary foreign writers. It was the Modern Scot’s
successor, Outlook, which in the summer of 1936 published pre-publication
excerpts from Edwin Muir’s controversial Scott and Scotland, thus re-igniting
the language arguments of the 1920s and causing a breach between Muir and
MacDiarmid which was never healed – a quarrel detrimental to Scottish criticism, for Muir had been one of the few critics to write with understanding
about MacDiarmid’s modernist poetry.
European concerns took a darker turn after the coming to power of Hitler
in 1933 and this was reflected in cultural as well as political publications. As
early as the summer of 1931, an anonymous review of Wyndham Lewis’s Hitler
in the Modern Scot criticised what the reviewer saw as the irresponsibility of
Lewis’s attitudes towards the Nazis; and in the Winter 1932 issue, the editor
Editorial article, Spectator, 6 October 1933, 434.
13
188
himself contributed an interesting analysis of the implications of nationalist
as opposed to national art. Writers who in earlier years had found themselves
inspired by the intellectual and artistic ideas of the continent, now found themselves involved in its political crises. In May 1932 Willa Muir wrote to Helen
Cruickshank, secretary of Scottish PEN, about the conditions she and Edwin
had found when they went as delegates to the International PEN conference in
Hungary. She told of a man tortured for distributing socialist pamphlets before
the start of the conference and wrote: ‘the general atmosphere is filled with
hatred, revenge and cruelty [. . .] I spent Thursday afternoon of Congress week
in roaring and greeting in my bedroom over the state of Central Europe’.14 In
1934, Catherine Carswell was one of a group of women asked to go to Berlin to
help look after the mother of the communist leader Dimitroff when he was on
trial in relation to the Reichstag fire, and in 1938 she was attempting to organise a settlement scheme in the Scottish Highlands for Austrian refugees from
Nazi persecution. In 1938 also, MacDiarmid dedicated his anti-Chamberlain
poem about the Munich Agreement jointly to Carswell and the Czech writer
Karl Ćapek, while Eric Linklater and Willa and Edwin Muir wrote an open
letter about the shame of Munich and called for a return to the pledges of
the League of Nations. The Muirs, Linklater, Carswell, MacDiarmid, William
Soutar and Naomi Mitchison were among sixteen prominent literary Scots
who wrote a joint letter to several newspapers in July 1938 appealing for funds
for the ‘ancient peoples of Catalonia and the Basque country’ in the aftermath
of the Spanish Civil War.15 More controversially, perhaps, Neil Gunn’s defence
of his decision to allow the translation of his novels into German appeared to
follow the PEN organisation’s belief that literature ‘should remain common
currency between nations in spite of political or international upheavals’. In
May 1938, Gunn wrote to the novelist James Barke who had attacked the
translation of Butcher’s Broom into German:
If I honestly feel that there is something of our common humanity in
Butcher’s Broom, should I not want Germans and other peoples to read
it as well as my own people? For the Germans as a people, a folk, I have
always had a deep respect, and feel that I owe them something for the
hours of intense delight I have got out of their music alone. How on
earth are we to let the Germans or the Russians or other peoples know
Willa Muir, letter to Helen Cruickshank 26 May [1932] in P. H. Butter (ed.), Selected
Letters of Edwin Muir (London, 1974), 74.
15
See e.g. ‘Spanish Relief Appeal’, Scotsman, 16 July 1938, 15.
14
Reshaping Scotland
189
that we believe we are all of the common people unless we contrive to
let them know?16
A commitment to nationalism and internationalism was no idealistic, abstract
theory in these difficult years, but a belief demanding difficult decisions in
both creative work and everyday life.
In conclusion, what I personally find so stimulating about interwar writing – both creative writing and non-fiction prose writing – is the commitment,
intellectuality and imaginative vitality of its debates. Yes, these writers were
often contradictory thinkers, sometimes even daft thinkers; but their capacity
to respond to new ideas, to utilise the dynamic of change to engage fully and
idealistically with both literature and politics was an essential ingredient in
their attempt to reshape their country. And as we have seen, for these writers
nationalism and internationalism were not polarities, but were two sides of the
one coin. Their ideological position – or positions, for there was a spectrum
of colours within their overall belief system – has been much misunderstood
by cultural commentators in our own time who persist in seeing the interwar revival in terms of narrow nationalism, or an attraction to fascism or a
retreat from historical reality into some mythical golden age of the past. Yet
even a modest perusal of the primary sources for the period – both creative
and discursive writing – should demonstrate that this is a falsification of ideas
and perspectives which were coming freshly to these Scottish writers from the
cultural revolution we now call the modernist period, and which they were
assimilating, analysing and reinterpreting in relation to their own needs and
traditions. And in the political sphere, it is important to remember that terms
such as ‘fascism’ or ‘communism’ did not mean the same to those living in the
period immediately after the end of World War One as they do to us whose
historical understanding includes the Hitler War and the Cold War. We ourselves need to learn to read historically, as opposed to putting the imprint of
our present times on the past.
With regard to the influence of Ireland and Europe in interwar Scotland,
it seems to me that the cultural and political influences of Europe probably
played a more actual and more lasting part in the shaping of the ideas of
those associated with the Scottish Renaissance movement and their imme Charter of International P.E.N., adopted by Scottish Centre when formed in 1927 and
included in official publications of the Centre; letter from Neil M. Gunn to James
Barke, 21 May 1938, James Barke archive, Mitchell Library, Glasgow; Modernism and
Nationalism, 322, 372.
16
190
diate successors than did admiration of the achievements of Celtic Ireland
and the inspirational vision of a possible Celtic identity for Scotland – a vision
which did have a partial success in the new focus it encouraged on the Scottish
Highlands and on the need to halt the decline of Gaelic, but which in wider
practical terms posed problems which could not readily be overcome. Yet as
we begin a new century, it appears as if the southern Irish, with their success
in Europe and at home, might once again act as an inspiration to the Scots to
find confidence in ourselves as a self-determining nation; and to find confidence also in our membership of a European community of nations to which
we culturally and politically belong, yet to which – as with British responses as
a whole – we seem reluctant to commit ourselves unreservedly. We present-day
Scots have still much to learn from the interwar period, its writers and their
contemporaneous influences, about how to engage more actively both with the
condition of Scotland and with relationships in the wider world.
‘Crossing Swords with W. B. Yeats’: Twentieth Century
Scottish Nationalist Encounters With Ireland
Bob Purdie
About fifteen years ago, on occasional Sunday afternoons, I would appear on
the platform of the London Branch of the Scottish National Party at Speakers’
Corner, Marble Arch. One of our regular hecklers was an old Irishman and
whenever he appeared I would declaim, ‘we are committed to entirely peaceful
methods, the SNP would rather fail to achieve its objectives than ever to use
violence’. He would splutter in outrage; ‘yer a bunch of cowards, ye’ve no guts’,
and on one occasion ‘they’ll partition ye’. He was experiencing what, I believe,
is called ‘cognitive dissonance’ by trying to read Scottish nationalism through
an Irish prism. This paper is about cognitive dissonance the other way round;
about how Scottish nationalists misunderstood Ireland.
Scotland and Ireland are alike in many ways and Scots and Irish have settled in each other’s countries and influenced each other for centuries, but there
are also significant differences. Both have a Celtic cultural heritage; both have
had a land question; both have been deeply divided on religious questions;
both have an unresolved problem in their political relationship to the United
Kingdom. But in Scotland land agitation took place in the geographically and
economically marginal Highlands and most speakers of Gaelic are Calvinists
not Catholics. The Irish union was made in the colonial era and was complete
with a Viceroy; the Secretary of State for Scotland was a member of the Cabinet
and an MP for a Scottish constituency. The Irish Union was often perceived
as a conquest. Objections to Scotland’s union were that the spirit and letter of
the Treaty were ignored by an English dominated government and parliament.
In both Ireland and Scotland, the terms ‘independence’ and ‘Home Rule’ were
often used interchangeably, but in Ireland it was Unionists who did so, to try
to block constitutional change; in Scotland nationalists elided the terms, to get
momentum for constitutional change.
In middle of the nineteenth century the most important religious conflicts in Scotland were within Presbyterianism, not between Catholics and
Protestants. And Episcopalians were not a privileged establishment, they were
a remnant of Jacobitism only recently freed from penal laws. Most Catholics
were immigrants, not dispossessed natives. The potato famine of 1845 – 9
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Bob Purdie
struck the Highlands but assistance was continued when aid to Ireland was
cut off and serious levels of mortality were averted. The Highland famine was a
trigger for clearing estates, but the landlords were native, in fact often the chiefs
of the clans who were being sent into exile. So that the Highland Clearances
were remembered as a class more often than as a national grievance.
By the end of the nineteenth century the overwhelming majority of the
population of Scotland lived in an industrial and urban society. The leaders
of the Scottish Labour Movement had created a united front with industrial
communities in England and Wales, often taking leading positions in London.
Scots were helping to expand, administer and defend the British Empire.
Liberal Unionists had united with paternalistic Tories in a Scottish Unionist
Party which usually did not exploit sectarian issues. And between 1850 and
1950 there were five Scottish Prime Ministers of the UK, Liberal, Tory and
Labour.
Scotland was British in a way that many Irish Unionists saw as a model for
their country. But a nationalist movement began to grow in the 1920s and
now, in the three hundredth year of the Act of Union, Scotland has never been
closer to leaving the UK. Scottish nationalism can be read as a counter-factual
version of Irish nationalism. Most nationalists are Protestants; Nationalism
and Unionism are two points on a continuous spectrum; cultural nationalism is, for the most part, outside politics. Language has not been a divisive
issue and Scotland’s territorial boundaries are not in dispute. Fenianism never
existed. Few Scottish nationalists have been republicans and Jacobites have
been more prevalent than Jacobins.
This paper will examine some of the ways in which Scottish nationalists
responded to Irish nationalism in the first half of the twentieth century. I will
show that Ireland had an important influence before 1922, but that the Scots
had great difficulty in interpreting events after the Treaty. Even when Scottish
nationalists directly copied Ireland, different conditions led to different outcomes. I will be looking at the first half of the twentieth century, when the
weakness of the national movement in Scotland made Ireland an important
inspiration and example. I will look at five aspects:
1. The Scots National League, the National Party of Scotland and Sinn
Féin
2. James Connolly, John MacLean, Erskine of Mar and ‘Celtic Communism’
3. Hugh MacDiarmid and Irish writers
4. Wendy Wood, Cumann na mBan, the IRA and the Stone of Destiny
Crossing Swords with W.B. Yeats
193
5. Scottish nationalist perceptions of Northern Ireland and partition.
I ought to say at the outset that Ireland is only one external influence.
Scotland looks east as well as west, and it has longstanding cultural links with
Scandinavia. It has been influenced by France, because of the Auld Alliance
against England, and Scots have traded with and lived in a wide swathe of
northern Europe. And of course Scotland shares an island with England and
Wales. But my paper is justified because the political influence of Ireland has
not been thoroughly investigated by Scottish and Irish historians.
Modern Scottish nationalism began in London in 1910 when former members of the Highland Land League launched ‘Comunn nan Albanach Lunnainn’,
named in English ‘the Scots National League, London’. It declared:
The Gaelic spirit must be revived within us. The fire and enthusiasm
that should characterise the dweller among the hills must be welded
with the sturdiness and perseverance of the peasant farmer of Lowlands.
For this union we must work. Our aim, our ideal should be a Scottish
Scotland.
It ended:
Had we the spirit of the men of the Covenant, or of those who followed
Montrose or Tearleach Og, we should made short work ere this of the
iniquitous and alien land system which has converted millions of acres
of cultivated land into a domain for wild beasts. Finally we must set up
once more a Scottish Parliament for the conduct of Scottish affairs. It
is only by working on these lines that Scotland can become a nation
once again.1
The phrase ‘A Nation Once Again’ and the design of its programme for a
bi-lingual concert in 1912, shows how deeply an Comunn was influenced
by the ‘Irish Ireland’ movement. By 1914 it was no longer active, but the
Land Settlement Act of 1919 broke up many large Highland estates and
distributed land to the crofters, releasing energies that had previously been
channelled through the Highland Land League. In 1920 two of the founders
of an Comunn, William Gillies and the Hon. Ruaraidh Erskine of Mar, were
founders of the London Branch of a new Scots National League, which had
Kensington, Kenneth MacKenzie, The Booklovers’ Resort n.d. 1910.
1
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Bob Purdie
seven branches, of which London was by far the largest and Gillies and Erskine
were President and Vice President of the SNL as a whole.
Gillies was born in Galloway and was taken to London as a child by his
businessman father. He taught himself Gaelic and wrote under the name
‘Liam Mac Gille Iosa’. He had been active in the Highland Land League,
through which he had formed a friendship with Art O’Brien of the Irish Self
Determination League; the largest Irish exile nationalist organisation. Erskine
was a Catholic from a Highland recusant family and a fervent Jacobite. He was
born in Brighton and brought up in Edinburgh where he learned Gaelic from
his Hebridean nanny. At the age of 23 he had become President of the Scottish
Home Rule Association, but soon moved to a pro-independence stance. He
too had close ties with Irish nationalism and claimed to have accompanied
Parnell on his last speaking tour. Both men moved to the left in the 1920s,
influenced by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
The London Branch held its first public meeting on 26 February 1921.
‘There in the heart of imperialist England’, it was reported, ‘Scotland’s blue
banner was unfurled. The audience assembled to the inspiring strain of the bagpipes’. Speakers included the Secretary of the London Branch of the Highland
Land League and Cathal O’Shannon, the Irish socialist, trade unionist and
comrade of James Connolly, who was described as an Ulster Scot and called
for unity among the Celtic peoples. The meeting ended with ‘Scots Wha Hae’
and ‘Auld Lang Syne’.2 The Glasgow and Edinburgh branches were not formed
until a year later and since the SNL only ever had seven branches, the London
Branch provided the bulk of the League’s finance as well as some of its leading
members.
In August 1921 William Gillies responded to the Irish truce with a plea for
Scots to act; ‘Let the SNL move, or for that matter any other league that has for
its object the Independence of Scotland, but for God’s sake move, be up and
doing’.3 The fervency of his call was not matched by clarity about what, exactly,
the action should be. But it is known, from correspondence in the papers of
Art O’Brien, that he and Erskine were promoting a secret military organisation called ‘Fianna na h-Alba’. However they dropped the idea when Michael
Collins advised them that they were far too weak to have any hope of success.4
In October 1921 the ‘Irish-Ireland’ societies in London invited leading
members of the SNL to attend a rally in the Albert Hall, to greet the
Liberty, April 1921.
Liberty August 1921
4
http://www.siol-nan-gaidheal.com/gillies.htm 17/01/07
2
3
195
representatives who had come to over to negotiate with the British government.5
The SNL welcomed the Treaty, with reservations, as a much greater offer
than anything the Irish had hitherto achieved. Some members responded by
becoming more intransigent; ‘we who have done so little, shall reap much from
the sacrifices of our compatriots in Ireland’, wrote H. C. MacNeacail in January
1922. ‘England’s offer to them has sent our national movement forward by
leaps and bounds. it has killed home rule for scotland once and for all
. . . As for Dominion status, faugh! the thought is ludicrous’.6 Lewis Spence
wrote a passionate plea for independence in the Edinburgh Evening News.
He claimed that only fear of an extended conflict in Ireland had moved the
British government. He warned against assuming a benign attitude to Scottish
demands. England needed Scotland as a dump for its surplus population and
‘only the threat of separation will avail if we are to obtain even a minimum of
self-government’.7
However Scottish nationalists could make little sense of a Civil War over a
Treaty, which gave more than they had dreamed possible for their own country and the emphasis of the SNL swung from Highland to Lowland and from
Gaelic revivalism to political action. It adopted a strategy of trying to get a
majority of nationalist MPs elected, who would withdraw from Westminster
to set up a Scottish parliament; on the model of Sinn Féin in 1918. But it was
claimed that the idea was first put forward by Lockhart of Carnwath, a Jacobite
opponent of the 1707 Union. Fighting elections needed a political party and,
in 1928, the SNL merged with the Scottish Home Rule Association and other
groups to create the National Party of Scotland.
The SNL had imitated Sinn Féin; but in Ireland the electoral competition
was between nationalists, while in Scotland nationalists were vying for votes
with Unionist parties, particularly Liberals and Labour. They found that the
only effective way to maximise their vote was to respond to the issues that
concerned voters; and these were rarely those that obsessed the nationalists. So
the leadership of the NPS was taken over by douce Presbyterian Lowlanders
and the flamboyant Highland, or would-be Highland, romantics were pushed
aside.
The new party fudged the difference between independence and Home Rule
and divisions appeared in 1932, when a group of Scottish notables launched
the Scottish Party. The leadership of the NPS considered that its members,
Liberty, December 1921
Liberty, January 1922
7
2 January 1922
5
6
196
Bob Purdie
which included the Duke of Montrose and a clutch of professors and businessmen, had the social standing and contacts that could boost the influence and
credibility of nationalist politics. But the Scottish Party was devolutionist and
much more right wing than the NPS. This created a suspicion in the minds of
many NPS members that the leadership intended to coax them into the fold
by making significant political concessions.
The London Branch was in the forefront of opposition to a merger and
at the 1933 NPS conference it was disbanded and two of its leading members, Angus Clark, (a Highland Land League veteran) and W. D. McColl, were
expelled. They had campaigned against a new form of words about the Empire.
The Scottish Party wanted Scotland and England to have joint responsibility
for running the Empire and the NPS adopted the statement: ‘Scotland shall
share with England the rights and responsibilities they, as Mother Nations, have
jointly created and incurred within the British Empire’. For Clark and McColl
this would reduce Scotland to the status of Ulster. They accused the leadership
of a mistaken assumption that ‘any form of government for Scotland must
include this higher executive or Imperial control’, which had been rejected by
dominion governments such as Canada.8
In his autobiography the leader of the NPS, John McCormick, claimed
that the London Branch and those NPS members who shared their outlook,
‘seemed to me to look at Scotland through green spectacles and despite a complete lack of historical parallel, to identify the Irish struggle as their own’.9 But
by this time Erskine of Mar had dropped out of politics and William Gillies
was dead, so that the leaders who were closest to Ireland had left the scene.
It seems more likely that McCormick and the leadership found it useful, in
convincing the rest of the Party, to associate the London Branch with its Sinn
Féin enthusiasm of 1910–22.
As for the Scottish Party, some of its key members came from a split in
the Glasgow Cathcart Unionist Association and it wanted, as the Beaverbrook
journalist, George Malcolm Thomson, put it, ‘nationalism for Tories’. His
book Caledonia, published in 1927,10 imagined a Scotland of the future that
has been taken over by Irish immigrants who have extinguished Scottish culture and driven out the native Scots. He shared his anti-Irish sentiments with
Andrew Dewar Gibb who, in his Scotland in Eclipse of 1930, described Irish
immigration as a, ‘national evil of the first importance’ and claimed that the
Scots Independent, April 1933
The Flag in the Wind (London, Gollancz, 1955), 67
10
George Malcolm Thomson, Caledonia (London, 1927)
8
9
197
Irish were responsible for most of the crime in Scotland and for, ‘dirty acts of
sexual baseness’.11 They were:
. . . immeasurably inferior in every way, but cohesive and solid, refusing obstinately, at the behest of obscurantist magic-men, to mingle
with the people whose land they are usurping; unaware of, or if aware,
disloyal to all the finest ideals and ambitions of the Scottish race: distinguished by a veritable will to squalor which is mainly responsible for
Scottish slumdom.12
Other nationalists argued that the Irish were victims of poverty and discrimination. For the poet Christopher Murray Grieve, better known by his pen
name ‘Hugh MacDiarmid’, they had the potential to return Scotland to its
Celtic roots. Catholics like Erskine of Mar and Compton Mackenzie, but also
MacDiarmid, who nearly converted to Catholicism during his army service,
thought they were a useful counterpoint to Scottish Calvinism. It is worth noting that, if you replace the term ‘Irish’ in the above quotations with ‘English’,
it would strongly resemble Lewis Spence’s fulminations against immigration
from south of the Border.
The price of unity with the Scottish Party was a secret deal to expel or exclude
those SNL members who were deemed to be associated with pan-Celtic nationalism and this included MacDiarmid, who was suspected, probably unjustly, of
fomenting opposition behind the scenes.13 In fact the merger did not boost the
SNP’s electoral fortunes and most former Scottish Party members drifted away,
so that the SNP was composed, very largely, of former NPS members. But by
then the influence of Irish nationalism had, for the most part, been purged
from the party’s system.
Home Rule had been part of the programme of the Scottish Labour
Party of 1888. In this period the labour movement straddled two different strategies. The first was an alliance with other Scottish social groups on
issues such as freedom of the Kirk from state interference, restrictions on
the licensed trade, women’s suffrage, and trade union rights. The land question in the Highlands was one of the most important unifying issues and
Andrew Dewar Gibb, Scotland in Eclipse (London, 1930), 55.
Quoted in Bruce Armstrong, (ed.) A People Without Prejudice?: The Experience of Racism
in Scotland (London, 1989).
13
R. J. Finlay Independent & Free, Scottish Politics and the Origins of the Scottish National Party
1918 – 1945 (London, 1994), 109.
11
12
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Bob Purdie
it connected Scottish radicalism to Irish nationalism, with another common
link in Home Rule. But Labour’s main strategy came to be the construction
of an urban working class alliance within the UK and this was implicitly
Unionist.
In 1893, when the Scottish Labour Party merged with the newly formed
Independent Labour Party, this strategy won out. Labour had made bigger
political advances in England and Wales and Keir Hardie argued that the
Liberal government was using its conflict with the Lords over Irish Home Rule
as an excuse to withhold social reform. The Executive of the Scottish Labour
Party reported in 1893:
Without deprecating the importance of Home Rule to the people
of Ireland, it is of minor importance to the people of this country,
and not to be compared with social legislation in the interests of the
unemployed, and any attempt to make this latter question subserve
the convenience of Home Rule or anything else will be bitterly
resented.14
In any case Irish immigrants had been a block vote used to pressurise the
Liberals and Labour got very little support from them before 1922. After the
Treaty the hierarchy and community leaders decided that Labour was the best
vehicle for Irish and Catholic interests. So, although Hardie never repudiated
Home Rule for Scotland, it was sidelined and this was one reason for the emergence of a nationalist party in 1928. Scottish nationalists often dreamed about
getting the Irish vote on their side, but as Labour became more Unionist the
Irish community became more solidly Labour.
One strategy for appealing to the Irish was to imitate Irish social republicanism. After the Civil War, left wing Irish nationalists like Constance Markievicz,
J. R. White and Roddy Connolly wrote in the Glasgow socialist newspaper
Forward and in Scottish nationalist periodicals like the Standard and the Scots
Independent. They often cited James Connolly and his Edinburgh origins. But
he had never endorsed Scottish self-government and his influence on Scottish
social republicanism was posthumous. The main influence was the Glasgow
Marxist of Highland descent, John MacLean.
MacLean had been imprisoned for his stand against the war and he had
defended the independence movements in Ireland and India, as well as the
Quoted in David Lowe, Souvenirs of Scottish Labour (Glasgow, 1919), 117.
14
199
Russian revolution. He was appointed Soviet Consul in Glasgow, but developed an independent Marxist interpretation of Scottish conditions, which
made him refuse to join the infant Communist Party. The late Walter Kendall
explained his thinking:
MacLean’s strategical view formed a unified whole. Scotland dominated
by the industrial heartland of the Clyde valley was nearer to socialism
than England. Glasgow then should strike the first blow . . . Scotland
was by culture, history and tradition a separate nation. The revolution
then must begin with the formation of a specifically Scottish Communist
Party which would initiate the Scots revolution and set off the powder
train in the rest of Britain.15
In 1920 he issued a leaflet headed ‘All Hail the Scottish Workers Republic!’
and in 1923 he founded the Scottish Workers Republican Party. The following
are key passages from the leaflet:
For some time past the feeling has been growing that Scotland should
strike out for national independence, as well as Ireland and other lands.
This has recently been strengthened by the English Government’s intention to rely mainly on Scottish troops to murder the Irish race. . . .
. . . Scotland must again have independence, but not to be ruled over
by traitor chiefs and politicians. The communism of the clans must be
re-established on a modern basis. (Bolshevism, to put it roughly, is but
the modern expression of the communism of the mir.) Scotland must
therefore work itself into a communism embracing the whole country
as a unit. The country must have but one clan, as it were – a united
people working in co-operation and co-operatively, using the wealth
that is created.
We can safely say, then: back to communism and forward to communism. 16
And he reminded the Irish in Scotland that ‘communism prevailed amongst
the Irish clans . . . ’ so that by allying with Scottish socialist republicans they
would be ‘carrying forward the traditions and instincts of the Celtic race’.17
The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900 – 21 (London, 1969), 286.
Nan Milton (ed.), John MacLean, In the Rapids of Revolution (London, 1978), 217 – 8.
17
Ibid.
15
16
200
Bob Purdie
This was an imaginative reworking of ideas Connolly had expressed, inspired
by Alice Stopford Green:
In the re-conversion of Ireland to the Gaelic principle of common ownership . . . the worst obstacles to overcome will be the opposition of
the men and women who have imbibed their ideas of Irish character
and history from Anglo-Irish literature. . . . One of these . . . is a
belief in the capitalist system of society; the Irishman frees himself . . .
when he realises the truth that the capitalist system is the most foreign
thing in Ireland. 18
Connolly was actually making a propaganda point against the claim that
socialism was a foreign importation and he was not advocating a form of
‘Celtic Communism’. MacLean and Connolly had not been close before 1916,
because they were in different Marxist factions and MacLean was mainly influenced by his friend Erskine of Mar. He had a short lived alliance with the SNL
but he died in 1923 and his party did not long survive him. Most Scottish left
wingers were hostile to nationalism and most Scottish nationalists were not
socialists. The departure from the scene of MacLean, Mar and Gillies meant
that Celtic Communist ideas died out for a decade until they were revived in
the 1930s by Hugh MacDiarmid.
As pupil teacher in Edinburgh before the First World War, he had known
some of Connolly’s former comrades and encountered his writings. But after
the war he was more influenced by French right wing nationalism than by
Scottish socialism. In 1928 he argued that a ‘Gaelic Commonwealth’ was
‘more in keeping with our national genius’ than a ‘Workers’ Commonwealth’.
The term ‘Gaelic Commonwealth’ came from the title of a book by William
Ferris, a Catholic Priest and chaplain to the Free State Army. He was a right
wing opponent of parliamentary democracy and advocated a decentralised
monarchical system based on the political structures of Celtic Ireland.19
By 1934 MacDiarmid had joined the Communist Party and the ‘Gaelic
Commonwealth’ had been transmuted into ‘Celtic Communism’. In his 1966
autobiography The Company I’ve Kept, he cited Ferris as the originator of ideas
put forward in Scotland by John Maclean. He had been given copies of her
father’s writings by Nan Mercer (later Nan Milton), Maclean’s daughter. They
were the basis for his ‘Red Scotland’ manifesto of 1935. In it he quoted Lenin’s
James Connolly, Labour in Ireland ( Dublin, n.d.), 6.
The Gaelic Commonwealth (Dublin, 1923).
18
19
201
statement that a British socialist who does not support the right of secession
for Ireland and India is a ‘chauvinist and annexationist’, and went on ‘that
is absolutely unequivocal and necessarily applies to Scotland as much as to
Ireland, India and etc’.20
The Communist Party, he claimed, had an opportunity to absorb the
oppositionists who had been excluded from the SNP, most of whom were left
wingers, and to take leadership of the national movement. But the leading
Scottish Communist, Peter Kerrigan, insisted that in the event of an imperialist war, unity with the workers of England and Wales would be the priority.
And he claimed that Scotland was not a nation, because it failed to meet all of
Stalin’s criteria for nationhood. MacDiarmid did not foresee how resistant his
comrades, schooled in the anti-nationalism of the Scottish left, would be to
his nationalist programme, but he also misunderstood the Comintern’s position on nationalism. It backed national struggles and proclaimed the right of
national self-determination; but this was predicated on nationalist movements
having a social base in the peasantry, who could be won over to the side of the
working class, as allies in the struggle against imperialism. It was not meant to
apply to nationalism in the advanced capitalist countries, where such movements were seen as reactionary. 21
Ireland and Scotland, despite their many similarities, fell on different sides
of the Comintern’s dividing line. Nationalism was acceptable in Ireland because
it was assumed that it was a peasant society and because of the long tradition of
support from Marx, Engels and Lenin. Scotland was mainly a capitalist country. Scottish socialists had never insisted, as their Irish counterparts had done,
on separate national representation at international level and, unlike the Irish
socialists, the Scots had not been allies of the Bolsheviks against revisionism
and reformism before 1914. Irish social republicanism was an answer a problem that did not exist in Scotland, namely how to win a new social base for
an onslaught on the Treaty settlement. And for the non-Republican Irish left,
it offered a way out of isolation in a profoundly anti-socialist culture. But in
Scotland socialists did not need a nationalist cover and, while most nationalists
were left of centre, they preferred to appeal to an idealised classless Scotland of
small towns and rural communities.
MacDiarmid was expelled from the Communist Party but he did inspire
National Library of Scotland, MS27035.
See, e.g. ‘Theses on the national and Colonial Question Adopted by the Second
Comintern Congress, 28 July 1920’, in Jane Degras (ed.), The Communist International
1919 – 1943, Documents (London, 1971), Vol. 1, 138–44.
20
21
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Bob Purdie
a minor strand of Scottish nationalism. One example was a review of Noelle
Davis’s Connolly of Ireland written in the Scots language, which appeared in the
Scots Independent in 1946: ‘Lenin was richt in walin oot Connolly in Ireland
an John MacLean in Scotland as the anely significant warkin-class leaders o
the 1914 – 18 war’. But Celtic Communism had almost been forgotten when
it was fitfully revived by sections of the Scottish far left in the late 1960s and,
more recently, by the Scottish Socialist Party.
MacDiarmid was the most important writer of the Scottish Renaissance,
the movement of the 1920s which sought to rescue Scottish literature from the
parochialism and sentimentality of the Kailyard writers of the late nineteenth
century. He visited Dublin for the Tailteann Games of 1928, invited by Oliver
St John Gogarty. During his stay he was mindful of possibilities for advancing
the Scottish cause and thought he had made links which would get Irish votes
for the NPS and an agreement with Count John McCormack to do a benefit
concert. Nothing came of either project.
He was influenced by a number of Irish writers but his friendships were
not predictable on the basis of politics. He met W. B. Yeats and their evening
together gives me the title for this paper. In a 1977 interview he recalled walking through Dublin streets late at night with Yeats, who said:
“Well if you’ll excuse me. . . I must urinate” – which he did in the middle of the road . . . And I thought to myself, well what an Irish Senator
can do there’s no reason why a Scottish magistrate can’t do, so I crossed
swords with him and we became very friendly after that.22
He also befriended Æ who wrote a foreword for his 1931 collection of poems
First Hymn to Lenin. But his greatest friendship was with Gogarty, who had
been one of the first critics to champion his poetry and for many years after
was a friend, helper and counsellor. The extent of their friendship can be measured by the fact that in 1945 Gogarty wrote a poem in Scots in his honour.
MacDiarmid was doing wartime service in the Merchant Navy and, on a visit
to Scotland, Gogarty made a dash to Greenock, where he just failed to get to
his friend before his ship sailed. The first stanza was:
MacDiarmid fren’, I sought you sairly,
And speered about you late and early;
Alan Bold (ed.), The Thistle Rises (London, 1984), 291.
22
203
Until one day I very nearly
Met your Marine
Wha could have told where sic a ferlie
As you hae been.23
Gogarty, of course, was not an opponent of the Treaty – in fact he had nearly
been assassinated by the IRA. The Irish writer with whom MacDiarmid might
be supposed to have most in common was Sean O’Casey, but Gogarty had
been an adviser during his bitterly contested divorce case, while O’Casey gave
evidence for the other side. Relations between them remained hostile until the
1960s.
MacDiarmid was grateful that Gogarty took him round the pubs in
which he used to drink with James Joyce. Joyce, whom he never met, was
the Irish writer who had the most important influence on MacDiarmid’s
Synthetic Scots, his literary language which brought together words and
phrases used in different dialects of Scots at different times, to express
meanings that could not be precisely conveyed by English. As Alan Bold
explains:
To MacDiarmid, dialect Scots was contaminated by the kailyard and
he used Synthetic Scots, quite deliberately, as an indigenous equivalent
of Joycean prose or the poetic idiom associated with Pound and Eliot.
The fact that the pseudonym Hugh MacDiarmid was first used, and
the first MacDiarmid lyric published in 1922 is of crucial importance:
MacDiarmid’s appearance came in the creative interval between the
publication of Joyce’s Ulysses in February and Eliot’s The Waste Land in
October . . . 24
The logic of his politics might have led him to become a Gaelic revivalist, but
as a Lowlander he had no Gaelic and he did not have time to learn. It was
much easier for him to extend his existing Borders Scots vocabulary. But this
was not, ultimately, why he chose to write in Scots. He was a philosophical
essentialist and he believed that the recapture of any part of Scotland’s national
essence must lead to the recovery of all of it. Scots contained many words that
were derived from Gaelic and the psychological effect of using it as a literary
medium would lead Scots back to their heritage, which had been stifled under
The Voice of Scotland, June 1948, 23
Alan Bold, Hugh MacDiarmid: The Terrible Crystal (London, 1983), 8 – 9.
23
24
204
Bob Purdie
the blanket of English civilisation. In effect he thought that a literature written
in Scots would lead to the kind of national revival that had been advocated by
the Irish language revivalists.
Making Gaelic the first official language of Scotland would have required
a revolution even more sweeping than that of Ireland. It would have opened
up divisions between Lowland and Highland and created enormous practical
difficulties. But the Scottish Renaissance did not ask Lowlanders to supplant
English as the language of everyday life. And it also implied linguistic plurality, not competition, between Scots, Gaelic and the Norn of the Orcadian and
Shetland writers. MacDiarmid’s literary revolution helped to blunt the political edge of the language issue and, much against his will, this strengthened the
moderation of Scottish nationalism and reinforced the division between the
political and the cultural.
In 1942 John McCormick took nearly half the SNP membership into
his Scottish Convention, a Home Rule pressure group. After the war he had
some success with the cross-party Scottish National Assembly and the Scottish
National Covenant, which was signed by two and a half million Scots. Just
before the war ended the SNP’s electoral strategy appeared to have been vindicated, when Dr. Robert MacIntyre won the 1945 Motherwell by-election;
but he was heavily defeated in the general election a few months later and in
the subsequent decade nationalist candidates scored derisory votes. The SNP
ploughed on, organising branches and fighting elections, but other nationalists resorted to stunts to try to attract the attention of the public. The most
celebrated of these was the recovery of stolen property, at Christmas 1950, by
a group of young people who liberated the Stone of Destiny from Westminster
Abbey. And when the new Queen adopted the title ‘Elizabeth II’ shop windows decorated with these digits were broken and pillar boxes blown up. Songs
about these exploits, with lyrics in broad Scots, were sung in the pubs and
howffs where nationalists gathered.
Ian Hamilton and the others who retrieved the Stone were supporters of
McCormick, but the most consistent perpetrators of stunts were the Scottish
Patriots led by Wendy Wood. For example they burned assisted emigration
forms outside the Australian consulate in Edinburgh and danced an eightsome
reel on the ashes. In 1959, when the GPO refused to bring out a commemorative stamp for the bicentenary of the birth of Robert Burns, she had her own
stamps printed and perforated them on her sewing machine. In 1972 she went
on hunger strike demanding Home Rule, but gave way to pressure from her
friends to abandon it.
205
She first became aware of Irish nationalism in the Basutoland bush in
1913, where she and her newly-wed husband trekked with Roger Casement’s
brother Tom, and she decided that the same principles must be applied to
Scotland.25 In 1932 she was arrested for leading a group that pulled down
the Union Flag from Stirling Castle and replaced it with a Scottish Lion
Rampant. As a result she was invited to Dublin by Cumann na mBan. She
was thrilled by the Celtic designs on the currency, the Gaelic street names,
observing a debate in the Dáil and attending a Cumann na mBan meeting,
at which she understood the discussion in Irish. But she seems not to have
thought it significant that she was the guest of an organisation which aimed
to overthrow the political institution she had just been admiring from the
gallery. She was like an amnesiac, wandering around not understanding the
history of what she was seeing, but judging only on the basis of immediate
impressions.26
In the mid-1930s she fell in love with Amhlaidh Mac Aindreas, who was
half Irish and half Scots and had, she claimed, ‘served his other country actively against our common enemy’.27 They shared a croft in Moidart, from which
they organised a group called Comunn Airson Saorsa na h-Alba. They visited
London and made contact with Jimmy Joe Reynolds, who was in charge of
IRA operations in England. (He was a bomb maker whose last words, in 1938,
were; ‘stand back John James – there’s a wee mistake’.)28 They hatched a plot to
liberate the Stone of Destiny with the help of the IRA, but the plan was vetoed
by HQ in Dublin.29 What they didn’t realise was that their allies considered the
Stone to be Irish and intended to take it to Ireland.30
In June 1939 Comunn Airson claimed to have accepted a pact of peace
between the IRA and Scotland and that the Scottish police had acknowledged that it was being kept. But they warned: ‘guard should be kept in case
of agents provocateurs. In such an event the Intelligence Department of the
Organisation would be pleased to co-operate with the Police’. Mac Aindreas
wrote:
We regard the Scottish police as Scots, like ourselves, whose first duty
is to Scotland. We look to them as an essential part of the machinery
Wendy Wood, I Like Life (Edinburgh, 1938), 141.
Ibid., 271–7; see also Wendy Wood, Yours Sincerely for Scotland (London, 1970), 183 – 5.
27
Wood, Yours Sincerely for Scotland, 125.
28
J. Bell Boywer, Secret Army a History of the IRA 1916 – 1970 (London, 1970), 153.
29
Information supplied to the writer by James Monaghan, Dublin.
30
Information supplied to the writer by Gery Lawless, London.
25
26
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Bob Purdie
of normal life, though at present they are being forced to serve, not the
Government of Scotland, but an alien legislature. 31
Even on the furthest fringe of Scottish nationalism the forces of the state were
not looked upon with a Fenian mindset. They regarded Police officers and
soldiers in Scottish regiments as mistaken in serving the London government;
but they were not enemies to be eliminated, they were potential allies to be
persuaded.
The next encounter involved Scottish nationalists from the opposite wing of
the movement. In the summer of 1934 a delegation of eight senior SNP members visited Northern Ireland, the Irish Free State and the Isle of Man, to report
on the workings of their government structures. They noted that Stormont
was able to keep Harland and Wolff’s going while Greenock yards were closed.
They were impressed by the progressive education system of Northern Ireland
and its provisions for Catholic schools. The Stormont MP, George Young, told
them: ‘we have the shaping of our destinies as a people in our own hands, and
we will never be foolish enough to go back to Westminster’. Lord Craigavon
was quoted praising the benefit of a Senate and House of Commons, ‘manned
by Ulster stalwarts’.32
In Dublin they contrasted the Land Commission favourably with
Westminster provision for the Highlands. They praised the Vocational schools
and aid to the Gaeltacht. They saw no evidence of persecution of Loyalists and
quoted the Bishop of Ossory on the good relations that prevailed, between
Catholics and Protestants. The Independent Senator, Colonel Sir John Keane,
told them that the old Unionists no longer looked to Westminster but ranged
themselves with those whose interests they shared. ‘Out of this’, he said, ‘has
emerged a new and different loyalty – a loyalty not to Westminster or to British
rule, but to the larger conception of King and Commonwealth’.33
Summing up, the delegation reported that:
The intense loyalty of Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man disposes
completely of the suggestion that Self-Government involves any idea
of separation from the British Commonwealth of Nations or from
the Crown as the symbol of Unity. We were interested to learn from
President de Valera that the Irish Free State did not wish to cut herself
Scots Independent, June 1939.
Scots Independent, September 1934.
33
Ibid.
31
32
207
adrift from the British Commonwealth and that, in his opinion, the
grant of Self-Government to Scotland would help in settling matters
between the Free State and the United Kingdom.34
They resembled nothing so much as a delegation of earnest Fabians, investigating collective farm nurseries and workers’ sports centres in the USSR, and
finding exactly what they went there to see. But the interesting question is,
not the selectivity of their perceptions, but why they emphasised continuing
loyalty to the Crown and the Commonwealth. The answer is clear when we
look at the composition of the delegation.
The most prominent member was James Graham, the old Etonian Sixth
Duke of Montrose who held five other hereditary titles. He was a member of
the Royal Company of Archers, the Monarch’s bodyguard in Scotland; he was
hereditary Sheriff of Dumbartonshire; Lord Lieutenant of Buteshire; a former
naval ADC to the King and a Commodore in the RNVR. He had been an
Assistant Private Secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of
Lords in 1905 and president of a trade mission to Canada in 1932. 35 The group
also included Sir Alexander MacEwen, a former Provost of Inverness who was
a member of various bodies concerned with development in the Highlands.36
Another was Ex-Ballie William Thomson, who later left the SNP and tried to
re-establish the Scottish Home Rule Association because of his opposition to
the Party’s reaffirmation of independence.37 And J. Kevan MacDowall, a former
member of the Cathcart Unionist Association and a founder of the Scottish
Party. He had been Chairman of the Imperial Union Association since 1932
and described himself as a ‘Scottish Home Ruler and British Imperialist’.38
So a number of them were far closer in culture and outlook to Craigavon
than to de Valera. They illustrate a crucial difference with Ireland. In Scotland
unionism and self-government were not polar opposites, both positions
depended on a prudential calculation of what was in Scotland’s interests at any
given time.
Once most of the former Scottish Party members had drifted off and
McCormick had defected, the door was opened for many of the expelled
radicals to return and the SNP tilted back towards sympathy with Irish nation Ibid.
Scottish Biographies 1938 (London, n. d.), 566.
36
Ibid., 464–5.
37
Jack Brand, The National Movement in Scotland (London, 1978), 234.
38
Scottish Biographies 1938, 464.
34
35
208
Bob Purdie
alism. In 1944 a resolution was put on the agenda of the annual conference
supporting the Irish campaign against partition, but it was deferred to the
next conference and was then overtaken by the outbreak of war.39 In the 1950
general election the charismatic nationalist Oliver Brown, stood in Greenock
as a joint Scottish Nationalist and Irish Anti-Partition candidate, but gleaned
only 1.77% of the vote. J. R. Campbell, the Communist candidate, got 3.3%
in this chilly period of the Cold War.40 Hugh MacDiarmid criticised Brown for
alienating Protestant voters without winning Catholic support.41
In 1951 the future leader of the SNP, Arthur Donaldson wrote, under
the heading ‘Partition Bedevils Irish Politics’, that no-one in the South now
thought that force would settle the issue and that there was practical co-operation across the border.
What does annoy the Eire people and a good many in Northern Ireland
too, is that they can have no real meeting as equals so long as Northern
Ireland has such limited powers of self-government. On anything that’s
really important both have to act through London on matters which
only concern the two sets of Irish. Had Northern Ireland really been
given self-government – the status of self-respecting state instead of an
oversize County Council – many of the problems of Partition would
have been solved in fact if not in appearance.42
For Donaldson, partition was a practical question that could be solved by cooperation amongst the Irish themselves, on the merits of the case. And he
assumed that, once they had thought it through, Ulster Unionists would realise that they too needed real self-government and not Westminster control. He
entirely missed the fact that the Irish Anti-partitionists wanted Westminster to
hand over Northern Ireland to Dublin sovereignty, not to negotiate with the
Unionists. And that the Unionists would have regarded any dealings with the
Republic as a betrayal.
What conclusions can be drawn from all of this? First that Scottish
conditions drew nationalists towards pragmatism and moderation because
Scotland’s perceived grievances were less extreme and the movement existed
in a society in which the political structures were robust and widely accepted.
Scots Independent, June 1944.
www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/ge50/i10.htm 24/01/07
41
National Weekly, 4 March 1950.
42
Scots Independent, October 1951.
39
40
209
Second, because no constituency within Scotland was irrevocably opposed
to self-government, not even English immigrants, all who lived in Scotland
were potential allies. This meant that there was always scope for broadening
support through compromise. Third, Scottish nationalism, originating in the
Highland Land League was supplemented by social radicals from the Labour
Movement. It was a splinter of nineteenth century Scottish Liberalism and its
line of descent was from Whig opposition to absolutism. So it shared common
values and methods with its main opponents. Fourth, its main grievance was
constitutional. The Act of Union had allowed Westminster governments to
override Scottish interests and they were ineffectively checked by a Parliament in
which English votes would always prevail. The remedy was political, the return
of the sovereignty surrendered in 1707. This did not require a fundamental
cultural revolution and, in twentieth-century conditions, it was best pursued
through existing democratic structures.
Until the 1920s the existing political parties offered channels through
which these grievances might be redressed. In the late 1920s changed circumstances created a new party, which brought together cultural nationalists who
imitated Ireland with devolutionists who had moved to a more radical position. But most Scots continued to think that the existing political structures
offered adequate remedies. The consequence, for the nationalists, was marginality, frustration, splits and futile experiments. But all of these led them back to
the conclusion that the only hope of success was through electoral activity and
democratic persuasion. The strategy finally began to pay off in the late 1960s,
but that falls outside the scope of my paper.
Does this history tell us anything about Ireland? I would suggest that, first,
the comparatively greater support for extreme movements and strategies in
Ireland must reflect its different status within the UK. Second, Ireland could
not have been seen as a model by Scots if there had been no common factors.
The most significant of these was alienation from London government and a
Westminster Parliament that served other interests and was impervious to their
protests. Thirdly, the gulf between nationalism and unionism was much wider
than in Scotland because political divisions were based on religious identity.
Fourthly, the fact that a stable parliamentary democracy did emerge in the
26 Counties implies that the undertow of Whig and Liberal values must also
have been present within Irish nationalism. Fifthly my conclusions suggest the
scope of the work that still has to be done if we are to construct a properly
comparative history of Ireland and Scotland.
Ruskin College Oxford
The Abbey:
National Theatre or Little Theatre?
Nicholas Grene
In July 1906, Karel Mušek visited Ireland. Mušek, actor and regisseur with
the Bohemian National Theatre in Prague, had become interested in the
work of Synge, had translated The Shadow of the Glen, and was to play the
Tramp in a production of the play at the National Theatre the following year.
He spent a day walking in the Wicklow hills with Synge, met members of
the Abbey company, and was packed off down to Galway to stay with Lady
Gregory. At Coole he paid ‘a visit to a Kiltartan cottage with Gregory’ before
attending ‘a dinner at Tullira Castle with [Edward] Martyn and Yeats. The
dinner featured a long discussion concerning the Czech and Irish national
theatres’.1
The subject was to return later in the year in a debate between the Abbey
Directors on the future direction of the theatre. Yeats, dissatisfied with the acting in his verse plays, proposed an ambitious long-term plan for a theatre with
a full classical repertoire:
We should keep before our minds the final object which is to create in
this country a National Theatre something after the Continental pattern. This Theatre should be capable of showing its audience examples
of all great schools of drama . . . Such a Theatre must [. . .] if it is to
do the educational work of a National Theatre be prepared to perform
even though others can perform them better representative plays of all
great schools. It would necessarily look to a National endowment to
supply it with resources before its work could be in any way completed
upon all sides.2
Karel Mušek, ‘V zapadlém kraji. Črty z Erina, ostrova hoře’ [In Distant Countryside.
Sketches from Erin, the Isle of Sorrow], Zvon Vol. 7 (1907), No. 23, 362 – 65, No.
24, 378 – 81, No. 25, 388 – 92. I owe this reference and a summary of the contents
of the article to Ondřej Pilný. A further extended article by Mušek describing his
1906 Irish visit was published in Zlatá Praha in 1916, prior to the Czech première of
The Playboy.
2
Ann Saddlemyer (ed.), Theatre Business: the Correspondence of the First Abbey Directors,
William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and J. M. Synge (Gerrards Cross, 1982), 169 – 70.
1
212
Nicholas Grene
Yeats dangled before his fellow Directors the prospect of an endowment of
£25,000 that their patron Annie Horniman was prepared to invest in the company ‘under certain circumstances’.3
Neither Gregory nor Synge rose to the bait. Synge opposed Yeats’s plans
particularly forcefully in his reply:
I think we should be mistaken in taking the continental Municapal [sic]
Theatre as the pattern of what we wish to attain as our ‘final object’ even
in a fairly remote future. A dramatic movement is either a) a creation
of a new dramatic Literature where the interest is in the novelty and
power of the work rather than in the quality of the execution, or b) a
highly organised executive undertaking where the interest lies in the
more and more perfect interpretation of works that are already received
as classics.
He left no doubt that the Abbey should continue in category (a) and pointed
out that even with the proposed new investment of capital they would still have
nothing like the resources of Prague: ‘Miss Horniman’s money [. . .] is quite
insufficient for anything in the nature of a Municipal Theatre. The Bohemian
Theatre has £12,000 a year and all scenery. The interest on the £25,000 would
be I suppose £800 or £900, so that for us all large schemes would mean a short
life, and then a collapse’.4 Synge and Gregory won out, Yeats had to make
do with the importation of an occasional actor and a business manager from
England, an arrangement that soon fizzled out.
For James Flannery, passionate advocate of Yeats’s drama, this was a tragic
wrong turning for the theatre, for which he blames Gregory and Synge:
One cannot help concluding that, as much as any single cause, the
intransigence, theatrical ignorance, and downright selfishness of Lady
Gregory and Synge thwarted Yeats’s ambitions for the early Abbey
Theatre. By blocking Yeats’s efforts to widen the theatrical scope of the
Abbey, they effectively limited the repertoire to Irish peasant plays. In so
doing, they also destroyed Yeats’s hopes of receiving satisfactory productions of his own poetic plays.5
Ibid, 175.
Ibid, 178.
5
James W. Flannery, W. B. Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre (New Haven and London, 1976),
225.
3
4
213
This is a partisan reading and ignores the practical good sense of Synge’s contrast between the Bohemian National Theatre and their own. A comparison of
the size and scale of the two may bring home the point.
The Czech National Theatre had its origins in the mid-nineteenth century. The neo-Renaissance building, designed by Josef Zítek, took thirteen
years to build. When a fire destroyed much of
it after a first opening in 1881, such was the
public enthusiasm that a million florins was
raised for its restoration in 47 days. Its grand
opening in 1883 featured the première of a
specially commissioned opera by Smetana. By
contrast with this enormous investment in a
purpose-built auditorium, the Abbey Theatre was created by converting the humble Mechanics Institute,
previously used as music-hall, at a cost of £1300 supplied by Annie Horniman. The Abbey’s tiny stage, as
Chris Morash points out, ‘was completely unsuited
to the monumental transformations of light and
space Yeats was beginning to discover in the work of
Edward Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia, but was
ideal for the claustrophic box-set of a play like Riders
to the Sea’.6
But it is not only that the Abbey was a small theatre unsuited to a classical repertoire, and had nothing like the resources of the Czech National
Theatre or its public support. The Abbey was in its origins a self-consciously
‘little’ theatre with a mission that fundamentally conflicted with its aims as
a national theatre. We can see this already in the famous statement issued
in 1897 by the founders of the Irish Literary Theatre, Yeats, Gregory and
Edward Martyn.
We propose to have performed in Dublin in the spring of every year
certain Celtic and Irish plays, which whatever be their degree of excellence will be written with a high ambition, and so to build up a Celtic
and Irish school of dramatic literature. We hope to find in Ireland an
uncorrupted and imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for
oratory, and believe that our desire to bring upon the stage the deeper
Christopher Morash, A History of Irish Theatre, 1601 – 2000 (Cambridge, 2002), 128.
6
214
Nicholas Grene
thoughts and emotions of Ireland will ensure for us a tolerant welcome,
and that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of
England, and without which no new movement in art or literature can
succeed. We will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and
of easy sentiment, as it has been represented, but the home of an ancient
idealism. We are confident of the support of all Irish people, who are
weary of misrepresentation, in carrying out a work that is outside all the
political questions that divide us. 7
The main thrust of this is anti-colonial, nationalist rhetoric: the rejection of
misrepresentation and stereotyping, the rediscovery of the national spirit – ‘the
deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland’ – the rejection of English cultural
hegemony. But this manifesto (initially for a ‘Celtic Theatre’) was first drafted
by Yeats, and Roy Foster makes it clear where he was coming from: ‘The idea
derived from WBY’s acquaintance with avant-garde French theatre, a literary enterprise, expressing the ascendancy of the playwright rather than the
actor-manager à l’anglais, like Beerbohm Tree and his “vulgar pantomime”’.8
Both Yeats and Martyn had had plays rejected by London theatre managements, and there was some personal animus in the phrase about the ‘freedom
to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England’. That ‘freedom to
experiment’, however, is perhaps better understood if we see the Irish Literary
Theatre and the Abbey that was eventually to succeed it, in the context of a
number of other ‘little’ theatre movements in the thirty year period before and
after 1897 (see Fig 1). The Abbey: National Theatre or Little Theatre?
Fig 1
Theatre
Directors
Playwrights
Place
Date
Théâtre Libre
André Antoine
Ibsen, Strindberg
Paris
1887
Independent Theatre
J.T. Grein
Shaw
London
1891
Moscow Art Theatre
K.S. Stanislavski
Chehov
Moscow
1898
Irish Literary Theatre
W.B. Yeats, A. Gregory
Synge
Dublin
1899
Intimate Theatre
August Falck
Strindberg
Stockholm
1907
Provincetown Players
George Cram Cook
O’Neill
New York
1916
Lady Gregory, Our Irish Theatre (Gerrards Cross, 3rd ed., 1972), 20.
R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats a Life, I The Apprentice Mage (Oxford, 1997), p. 183.
7
8
215
Many of these theatres were small-scale, if not amateur affairs. The
Moscow Art Theatre began rehearsing in a barn; the Irish Literary Theatre,
and its successor the Irish National Theatre Society in the pre-Abbey days,
performed in small halls. Cathleen ni Houlihan was first staged in St Teresa’s
Hall, normally used for temperance lectures. Some of the audience who
came along for their usual demonstration of the evils of drink must have
been taken aback by Yeats and Gregory’s intoxicating patriotic play.9 The
Provincetown Players started out as an amateur group doing summer seasons
in the Rhode Island seaside resort that gave them their name. This was not
just a matter of humble beginnings on modest resources. The ‘little’ theatres
chose to be little by the standards of the very large auditoria that were the
norm in the nineteenth century. This is most obviously the case with the
Intimate Theatre, set up in 1907 in Stockholm, specifically to put on the
chamber plays of Strindberg that would have been lost in the mainstream
theatres.
The naturalistic plays of Ibsen and the earlier work of Strindberg were
crucial to the repertoire of both Antoine’s Théâtre Libre and to its London
counterpart the Independent Theatre. Antoine’s Ghosts was famous – it is one
of the very few plays we know J. M. Synge actually saw in the Paris theatre – and
its English-language première by the Independent Theatre in 1891 produced
the deluge of critical abuse that Shaw took pleasure in collecting in his
Quintessence of Ibsenism. To achieve the naturalistic effectiveness of plays such
as these, with low-key acting and realistic mise-en-scène, small venues were
needed where minimal movements and sounds could be made to count. This
was the period also at which it began to be normal to dim house lights and
insist on silence during the performance, revolutionary practices on which
the Abbey Directors were to insist. A relatively small audience were gathered
together in darkness to watch with rapt attention the intense spectacle that
appeared before them on the stage. It was a far cry from the noisy, gregarious
social occasion that had been the norm for visits to the theatre for most of
the nineteenth century.
The ILT manifesto claimed for itself that ‘freedom to experiment’ that is
not found in the theatres of England. ‘Freedom’ is another key value for all
these groups: the Théâtre Libre, the Independent Theatre. The Free Theatre did
not mean that one could enter without paying for a ticket. On the contrary,
Antoine’s theatre depended on subscriptions, just as the ILT was to depend
See Nicholas Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel
(Cambridge, 1999), 275.
9
216
Nicholas Grene
on patrons: their manifesto was, like so many manifestoes, effectively a fundraising letter. What these theatres were to be free of, independent of, were the
demands of the market-place, the commercial ethos represented by the actormanager – Beerbohm Tree and his ‘vulgar pantomime’. Eugene O’Neill’s father
is a good case in point – James O’Neill, who starred for almost thirty years in
a touring version of The Count of Monte Cristo. He came to hate it, but the
public continued to love it, and it cleared him thirty-five to forty thousand a
year, if we are to believe Long Day’s Journey Into Night. It was the visit of the
Abbey company to New York in 1911 that helped to turn Eugene O’Neill into
a playwright: ‘My early experience with the theater through my father really
made me revolt against it. As a boy I saw so much of the old, ranting, artificial,
romantic stage stuff that I always had a sort of contempt for the theater. It
was seeing the Irish players for the first time that gave me a glimpse of my
opportunity’.10
These were arthouse theatres, rejecting the popular appeal and the crass
sensationalism of the commercial stage. The Moscow Art Theatre, the Irish
Literary Theatre, proclaimed their values in their titles. The play in production was to be an integrated work of art, not merely a vehicle for the ego
of the star actor or an occasion for the scene-designer’s ingenuity. The plays
produced were to have lasting value as part of a ‘school of dramatic literature’, not just hackwriting churned out to put bums on seats. The agenda
was not always the same for all of these theatres. Yeats and Gregory opposed
the naturalism of Ibsen that had been the radical new style of the theatre
movements in France and England. The freedom of experiment to which all
the little theatres were committed involved experimentation with poetic and
symbolic as well as realistic styles. The Moscow Art Theatre, spearheaded by
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko as a revolution in acting and production, had significantly different priorities than the Irish Literary Theatre,
controlled and directed by the writers Yeats, Gregory and Martyn. What
they all shared was the determination to pursue artistic excellence rather
than box-office success as their main objective; these were elite rather than
popular theatres.
The Abbey, when it was finally established in 1904, was a little theatre
in every sense of the term. It had 562 seats, compared with 1400 in the
Gaiety, 1950 in the Queens, two of its Dublin rivals. The cheapest seat in the
house when it first opened was a shilling, twice the price of the cheap seats
Louis Sheaffer, Eugene O’Neill: Son and Playwright (London, 1968), 205.
10
217
in the other theatres, and this was a deliberate policy insisted upon by Annie
Horniman, the Abbey’s patron, in order to ensure a refined clientele. Chris
Morash has argued, in fact, that it was the introduction of sixpenny seats
and the class of people who could afford them, shortly before the production of The Playboy that contributed to the riotous reaction to that play.11 But
from the beginning, there had been a mismatch between the ‘little theatre’
spirit of the Irish Literary Theatre and its claims to national status. There
was, for example, trouble with the Irish language lobby at its very first season
in 1899. A young Padraic Pearse wrote in to An Claideaimh Soluis, organ of
the Gaelic League, in loftily dismissive terms: ‘Against Mr Yeats personally
we have nothing to object. He is a mere English poet of the third or fourth
rank, and as such he is harmless. When he attempts to run an “Irish” Literary
Theatre it is time for him to be crushed’.12 At this stage of course, not only
were these allegedly Irish plays being produced in English, they were being
acted by a company of English actors.
More fundamentally, there was the claim of the Irish Literary Theatre to
‘bring upon the stage the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland’. What
were these deeper thoughts and emotions? And who was to judge what they
were, the small group of upper-middle class Anglo-Irish writers running the
movement, or the audience of Irish people who came to see the plays? This
was at issue in the early controversies over Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen in
1899, and Synge’s first staged play, The Shadow of the Glen, in 1903. Yeats
treated the legend of the countess who sold her soul to devils to buy food for
the starving peasants as a fit subject for romantic drama, in the manner of
Goethe’s Faust. But for Irish people, just half a century after the Famine, with
folk-memories of souperism, the attempted conversion of Catholics in the
Protestant soup-kitchens, it was an inflammatory subject. Synge heard the
story on which he based The Shadow from a shanachie in the Aran Islands,
about as authentic a source as you could get from an Irish cultural nationalist point of view at the time. But his treatment of the young woman who
finally goes off with a tramp after her old husband has pretended to be dead
to catch her out in infidelity was judged a decadent, corrupt, product of the
Parisian quartier Latin. For Irish middle-class nationalists the iconic figure of
the peasant woman had to be shown to have middle-class standards of sexual
probity.
Morash, History of Irish Theatre, 130 – 8.
Quoted by Richard Kearney, Myth and Motherland, Field Day Pamphlet no. 5 (Derry,
1984), 15.
11
12
218
Nicholas Grene
In the past, the standard interpretation of these rows over the early productions of the Irish national theatre movement was to see it as a clash between
the innovative drama of the playwrights and the philistine reaction of their
narrow-minded nationalist audiences. As Yeats put it with spectacular offensiveness in the wake of the Playboy riots, ‘the people who formed the opposition
had no books in their houses’.13 But it can equally be seen as having its origins in the very fact of an elite, arthouse theatre setting out to fulfil the role
of a national theatre. The cultural nationalism of Yeats, Gregory and Martyn
was not in doubt. They all in their different ways opposed the dominance of
England, looked forward to the independence of Home Rule, if not a more
radical republican separatism. Still, in their manifesto, with all its nationalist rhetoric, they sought the support of Irish people ‘in carrying out a work
that is outside all the political questions that divide us’, in other words liberal
unionists as well as nationalists. Again and again, Yeats resisted the demands
for a greener Abbey: ‘in our theatre we have nothing to do with politics: they
would only make our art insincere’.14 In the winter of 1901 – 2, while planning
the production of Cathleen ni Houlihan, he was still considering involvement
with a London-based group called the Masquers and a project for a ‘Theatre
of Beauty’ there.15 In 1919 Yeats addressed an open letter to Lady Gregory,
sardonically entitled ‘A People’s Theatre’, in which he publicly renounced the
achievement of the Abbey. He famously declared that for the future: ‘I want
to create for myself an unpopular theatre and an audience like a secret society where admission is by favour and never to many’.16 This is often seen as a
spectacular volte-face, associated with Yeats’s switch of dramatic style to the
esoteric plays for dancers modelled on the Japanese Noh. But equally it can
be regarded as the emergence from latency of the values of the little theatre
that had always been there in Yeats’s theatrical enterprise, only masked by its
national ideology.
The Czech and the Irish national theatres, on the face of it, might seem
to have had a lot in common. Both were products of a cultural nationalism
struggling to assert its separate identity within Empire. A theatre was one key
way of expressing such a national aspiration: ‘in the theatre’, as Yeats was fond
of misquoting Victor Hugo, ‘the mob became a people’.17 Yet there were crucial
Quoted in Foster, The Apprentice Mage, 360.
Ibid, 367.
15
Ibid, 257 – 8.
16
W. B. Yeats, Explorations (London, 1962), 254.
17
See Marjorie Howes, Yeats’s Nations: Gender, Class and Irishness (Cambridge, 1996),
71 – 2.
13
14
219
differences. In the case of the Czechs, language was central. A main objective
of the Bohemian National Theatre was to provide a venue for performances
entirely in Czech, where previously German-language theatre had been
predominant. It was therefore not liable to attacks like that of Pearse on Yeats
for using the language of the colonial power in the supposedly national theatre.
More significantly, though, when Yeats proposed for the Abbey the model of
the continental municipal theatre, he was reaching out to a sort of institution
that had no precedent anywhere in the United Kingdom. The tradition of court
theatres so common across Europe was not established in Britain. Instead there
was the compromise, worked out originally by the frugal Queen Elizabeth, by
which the royal household gave its countenance but not financial support to
what remained a commercial entertainment industry. It was not until the 1960s
that Britain belatedly got its own National Theatre, some thirty-five years after
the Abbey had become the first state-supported theatre in the English-speaking
world. When the Czechs set about creating a national theatre, it had to have a
monumentality to match the theatres and opera-houses of the imperial centre
in Vienna. To claim a separate national identity, the Czechs had to show that
they too could produce the high performance art, opera and ballet as well
as drama, that was the cultural indicator of nationhood, and provide the
appropriate venue to stage them with due magnificence. By contrast with this
situation, it was against the commercial managements of London that the Irish
Literary Theatre defined itself.
This accounts for the curiously self-deprecatory tone of the manifesto. Their
‘Celtic and Irish plays . . . whatever be their degree of excellence will be written with a high ambition’. Don’t expect from us, they seem to be saying, the
polished productions you see in London. Synge strikes the same note in the
passage (quoted earlier) when he talks of the Abbey’s work as ‘a new dramatic
literature where the interest is in the novelty and power of the work rather
than in the quality of the execution’. In fact, from very early on, London critics
admired the Abbey players for the freshness, simplicity and integrity of their
interpretation of the Irish plays. Their reaction was like that of Eugene O’Neill,
marvelling at the contrast with the barnstorming of the standard professional
theatre of the time. The Abbey thus fulfilled the function of an avant-garde
‘little’ theatre, as a dramaturgical alternative to the mainstream. And from an
international point of view what differentiated it from other theatres was its
Irishness. In a sense, therefore, it could be argued that the Abbey was most
successfully a national theatre when it was outside Ireland rather than within
Ireland. Where Irish audiences at home might challenge the status of this small
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Nicholas Grene
elite group to express the ‘deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland’ as a whole,
in Britain and beyond, their otherness could be credited as expressive of their
national difference. The little theatre in Abbey Street became a national theatre
most fully and unquestionably when it staged its plays outside Ireland.
Trinity College Dublin
Playing National:
The Scottish Experiment
Donald Smith
This paper begins with a health warning or at least disclaimer. I can make
no claim to academic detachment in relation to the process through which a
National Theatre of Scotland emerged.
Having been a long-standing advocate I actively coordinated the campaign
for a National Theatre of Scotland between 1992 and 1997. In 1999 – 2000 I
co-chaired a Federation of Scottish Theatre working party on the issue and, in
2000 – 1, I chaired the official working party established by the Scottish Arts
Council (SAC) to make recommendations to government on the form and
policy of a National Theatre.
Although since July 2000 the devolved government of Scotland had been
committed in principle to establishing a National Theatre, the presentation
of the official report in May 2001 was followed by delay; I was asked by the
SAC and the theatre organisations to convene a steering group that would be
responsible for overseeing arrangements until the new organisation could be
established. This happened finally in early 2004, with generous governmental
funding.
Although my personal involvement is now very much scaled back, I am a
Board member of the new organisation, enabling in the early stages a degree of
continuity with its genesis.
Some might describe this as a journey from terrorist to cabinet member.
However, the reality was more complex, presenting on many fronts Yeats’ ‘fascination of what is difficult’. At some points I was forced reluctantly to take
the stage as a public actor; at others I grappled like a dramatist with concept
and plotlines while, more often, I felt like a director struggling to make the
chemistry of competing personalities and interests cohere. Throughout, however, I hope that I was guided by a number of key principles that will emerge
in the course of this narrative, as Scotland moved towards playing National.
222
Donald Smith
Act One: National Dramas
This is not the place to rehearse the long historical quest in Scotland for
some form of National Theatre.1 It is, however, important to recognise from
the outset that this long and often frustrated search was motivated by the
desire for a national drama. Various points of theatrical development have
been identified with the incarnation of this holy grail, ranging from the sixteenth century achievement of Sir David Lindsay to the Theatre Royal of
J. H. Murray in nineteenth century Edinburgh, to the combined efforts of
Glasgow’s Citizens and Edinburgh’s Gateway theatres in the nineteen forties
and fifties.
The national drama would by definition embody in dramaturgy, acting
and production styles that which is culturally and historically distinctive about
Scottish society, so imposing a weight of political as well as artistic expectation
on its periodic flowerings.
The scale of such expectation in its turn exposed the lack historically of
any consistent tradition of playwriting in Scotland and the weakness, or often
absence, of the financial, social and political support necessary to sustain the
theatrical framework for a national drama.
With the onset of state support for the arts after World War II a professional
theatre that was not solely swayed by commercial pressures did emerge in
Scotland. But the paradox was that the new subsidised companies were more
interested in the professionalisation of theatre than they were in developing a
Scottish national drama.
Such competing aspirations made twentieth century Scottish theatre an
arena of conflict, though also one of considerable artistic achievement. Restless
natives and changing international influences sometimes clashed and sometimes coalesced in ways that seemed to chime with Scotland’s own changing
cultural and political circumstances.2
A guiding influence in these developments from the nineteen sixties was
the Scottish Arts Council exercising the powers of state patronage with a
minimum of public political accountability. But the artists could be turbulent and, from the nineteen sixties on, what happened on Scotland’s public
See passim. Bill Findlay (ed.), A History of Scottish Theatre (Edinburgh, 1995) and Donald
Campbell, Playing for Scotland: A History of the Scottish Stage 1715 – 1965 (Edinburgh,
1996)
2
See Cairns Craig, and Randall Stevenson (eds), Twentieth Century Scottish Drama
(Edinburgh, 2001).
1
223
stages carried an edge of creative excitement and political risk or challenge.3
In the late eighties, tensions collided around the short lived Scottish Theatre
Company which had been established to tour specifically Scottish plays. At the
same time, John McGrath’s 7:84 Theatre Company was embroiled in political and artistic controversy as its reaction to Thatcherism became increasingly
strident.
In 1987 the Advisory Council for the Arts in Scotland, an offshoot of the
Saltire Society, convened a conference in Edinburgh to push the case for a
National Theatre. This was addressed by national theatre directors from
Finland and Iceland and also by David Daiches who eloquently expounded
the literary and cultural role that a National Theatre could play in Scotland.
The core argument was that these long-term objectives could not depend solely
on the fluctuating choices of individual artistic directors or the financial fates
of individual theatre companies; there had to be a sustaining cultural policy if
the full artistic potential of Scottish theatre were to be realised.
The conference was attended by approximately two hundred people and
sign-posted increasing support among actors, writers, technicians, individual
directors and literary commentators for a National Theatre.
However, the key funders, The Scottish Arts Council for central government and local authorities, remained unmoved. Then, in 1992, under its new
director Seona Reid, The Scottish Arts Council, in partnership with other
national cultural bodies and local government, launched the largest ever public consultation on culture to be undertaken − the Charter for the Arts in
Scotland. This reported a strong desire on the part of audiences to see more
Scottish drama and, in consequence, a working party was established in 1993
to examine the feasibility of ‘a National Theatre resource’.
Act Two: Stalemate
Ably chaired by Professor Sally Brown of Stirling University, the working party
revealed a chasm between representatives of the theatre, artists and public bodies on the one hand, and the existing theatre managements on the other. The
first group favoured the cultural, educational and potentially economic benefits of a National Theatre to Scotland. The latter portrayed a National Theatre
as centralising, potentially conservative and, in a narrow sense, nationalistic.
Bill Findlay (ed.), Scots Plays of the Seventies (Edinburgh, 2001)
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It was, of course, also perceived as a funding threat to an already struggling
theatre sector.
However, the Charter process followed by the working party sparked significant public interest, and an active campaign for a National Theatre was
set in motion. This campaign was effectively an alliance between the Advisory
Council for the Arts in Scotland (with the Saltire Society behind it) and Equity.
It was based in my office at the tiny Netherbow Theatre in Edinburgh’s Royal
Mile.
One of the first actions of the campaign was to publish a list, first of one
then of two hundred modern Scottish plays.4 This was intended initially to
scotch the argument from ignorance that Scotland had no dramatic tradition
on which to base a National Theatre but it had, in the event, a much wider
impact. The list demonstrated not just the vitality of Scottish theatre but its
artistic and linguistic diversity. The relative neglect of Scottish writers by the
theatre institutions as a whole (there were notable exceptions) was exposed,
but so was the argument that a National Theatre need be narrow or nationalistic.
The playlist received wide and sympathetic press coverage. The public
argument for a National Theatre was won in 1993 – 4 in a way that offered
a potentially unifying artistic case. Yet the institutional politics remained in
gridlock and, despite Sally Brown’s best efforts, the working party ended in
stalemate. Its deliberations evoked an SAC promise to create an undefined
‘National Theatre Resource’. This promise was never acted upon and the working party’s report remained unpublished.
Act Three: Enter Devolution Stage Left
The context of this stalemate was dramatically altered by the Devolution
Referendum of 1997 with its positive vote for the establishment of a Scottish
Parliament. This was followed with the Scotland Act of 1998 and the first
Scottish election in 1999. Among the many consequences of these events was
direct democratic and political accountability for governmental public bodies
such as The Scottish Arts Council.
The new Parliament’s Standing Committee on Education, Culture and
Sport instituted an early inquiry into Scotland’s national performing arts
See Donald Smith (ed.), The Scottish Stage: A National Theatre Company for Scotland,
36 – 46 (Edinburgh, 1994).
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companies, including the non-existent national theatre. The paradox that
Scotland possessed a national opera company, orchestras and a national ballet
but no national institution for its socially rooted theatre appeared glaring. In
fact, from this point the National Theatre seemed to attain its own ‘virtual
reality’ in public and media perceptions.
The existing theatre managements thought quickly on their feet. Some
artistic directors such as Kenny Ireland of Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum, were
long-standing supporters of ‘national drama’, but all could recognise that new
public investment might depend on resolving the paradox. Led by their Chair
Hamish Glen of Dundee Rep, the Federation of Scottish Theatre appeared at
a parliamentary hearing to pledge their support for a National Theatre that
would be created by combining the best artistic achievements of the existing
theatre companies. As the Parliamentary Committee proceeded towards a
positive recommendation on creating a National Theatre, the Federation
hastily convened a working party to flesh out their new idea.
I was invited to join the Federation working party as a member who had
actively participated in the public campaign and I chaired most of the meetings. Strong personalities were involved and differing emphases, but it was
clear that a National Theatre, which commissioned work from the existing
theatre companies for both touring and site specific productions, commanded
majority support. For some this was a case enthusiastically espoused; for others
it was a matter of the least worst option. The process was more political than
practical but nonetheless necessary to prevent squabbling disunity spiking
the external case. The Working Party’s conclusion was duly presented to the
Scottish Arts Council and to government. Some of those who had fronted the
campaign, such as Paul Scott of the Saltire Society, did not see the Federation’s
proposal as the best way forward.
Act Four: Squaring the Circles
The Scottish Arts Council was now left in a delicate position. Despite the
Charter process of 1992−3 and the subsequent working party, it had blown
cold on the idea of a National Theatre, confident that there was little support
among its client theatres. At heart the Arts Council did not want another
troublesome and expensive national company that had to be resourced and
placated. Now, however, the Scottish Arts Council had new political masters
and the theatre sector pushing its federal proposal. At the same time the Arts
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Council was acutely aware of the overall financial weaknesses of the existing
theatre infrastructure, as well as its inconsistent standards.
With the agreement of the Scottish Executive, the SAC opted for a further, more widely representative Working Party that would be charged with
examining potential models and making detailed recommendations based on
feasibility rather than aspiration
The resultant committee, which I also chaired, embraced competing views
of what a National Theatre of Scotland should be. So the task was to build consensus and to model something that had a realistic hope of succeeding in the
real world. It had become necessary to chart the process by which the National
Theatre which was now a betting likelihood, could move from virtual reality
to operational capacity.
The Working Party had its own very capable independent administration,
in the shape of Morag Ballantyne, and was therefore able to carve out its own
strategy. We agreed that this should be founded on the widest possible consultation and that it should seek to articulate, from first principles, the need
for a National Theatre. Only then would we proceed to recommending an
appropriate model.
The needs quickly emerged:
— to provide sustainable career patterns for writers, actors and other
theatre professionals in Scotland
— to provide a coherent interface between theatre and education at all
levels
— to increase international profile
— to reach the parts of Scotland that were not included in present theatre
provision, and all age groups
— to harness and celebrate the collective memory and achievement of
Scottish theatre
— to provide a laboratory of experiment for Scottish ideas and identities
in the twenty-first century
— to revitalise theatre in its relationship with changing Scottish
audiences.
The campaign for a National Theatre had argued that these needs were best
met by a permanent theatre ensemble. I had supported and articulated that
idea in earlier essays.5 The Federation of Scottish Theatre argued for a whole
that would be the sum of the parts.
See Smith (ed.), The Scottish Stage: 13 – 18 and 22 – 29.
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Through the consultation process and the ongoing debate I personally
became convinced that no single theatre building or company could meet
the challenge. At the same time I felt strongly that a National Theatre would
need to create new combinations and chemistries and not solely depend on
existing theatre configurations for future challenges. It would need full creative
freedom to initiate and develop, while using commissions, collaborations and
studio or site specific experiments as its methodologies for sustained creative
development.
Though sometimes frayed at the edges, a consensus formed around these
principles and detailed work was undertaken to demonstrate that this was feasible, given adequate investment. All else depended on this because, if the new
model did not attract genuinely new investment, then it could not achieve
things which were not possible for the existing theatre ecology; it might, in
fact, diminish or undermine what Scotland had already.
The report was published in May 20016 and widely welcomed. We now
had an agreed model and plan; could funding be secured to translate it into
action?
Act Five: Delayed Gratification
A two year delay ensued. The Scottish Arts Council welcomed and approved
the Working Party’s recommendations, while signalling anxiety about the
financial health of the present infrastructure. The report calculated that the
National Theatre needed £3.5m of new annual investment, but the Scottish
Executive had set aside £1.5m to establish a National Theatre.
In the event, that money was diverted to the existing theatres. As a Scottish
election loomed in 2003 the then culture minister, Mike Watson, fell out of
political favour due to his support for a campaign against hospital closures in
Glasgow.
This is the part of a long difficult process for which I can claim some
personal credit. The rest was responding objectively to process and need. There
was a huge temptation at this point, egged on by a supportive press, to attack
the Scottish Executive for prevarication but I refused to do this. Instead, in
my new role as Chair of the National Theatre Steering Committee, I publicly
sympathised with the need to invest in the existing theatres while urging the
Scottish National Theatre: Report of the Independent Working Party (Edinburgh, 2001).
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Donald Smith
politicians to honour their pledge to establish the National Theatre. As a theatre
historian I knew in my bones that it was better to have no National Theatre
than one without the means to be successful.
In due course, patience was rewarded and, at the end of 2003, Richard
Findlay was appointed Chair of the National Theatre with an initial budget
of £3.5m. A Board was quickly formed and in 2004 Vicky Featherstone was
appointed the Artistic Director.
It took a further year to establish the full staff team with its first commissions, projects and education programme. In February 2006 an ambitious
artistic programme was launched for the year ahead, with ten site specific theatre events across Scotland under the theme of ‘home’.
Postscript
This is not the place or time to evaluate the new artistic programme or to
begin to measure the achievements of the National Theatre of Scotland against
its original objectives. A promising start has been made, but plenty of legitimate debate remains to be had about methodology and purpose. The National
Theatre of Scotland is clearly an experiment and its value will lie on what both
its failures and successes will tell us about the future.
It is my own belief that the National’s overall success depends on recognising the social, cultural and political roots from which the new institution has
emerged. If its artistic innovations can respond to these contexts and not solely
to cultural fashions, then the foundations of genuine artistic achievement have
been laid, not just for Scotland but for drama as a truly international artform.
Scotland’s writers will be central to that process.
What this account confirms is the socio-political character of theatre as
an artform, both in its organisation and creative process, and in its sensitivity or perhaps exposure to context. For my own part, I wish that the theatre
community had been able to lead the way into devolution with an innovative
National Theatre imagining Scotland’s futures, just as theatre had maintained
a space for creative resistance during the years of minority Conservative rule
in Scotland. The historical reality is that devolution set the pace for change in
the theatre sector.
I hope that what was brokered has preserved the space for creative experiment, and for the expression of diverse national dramas which explore past and
present, and look to the future, without predetermining outcomes. That might
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be a model for participative democracy in the twenty first century as well as
theatrical collaboration.
Netherbow Theatre, Edinburgh
Relations and Comparisons between Irish and Scottish
Poetry: 1890 to the Present Day
Edna Longley
This paper sets out the way in which we1 conceive one of the comparative
projects being undertaken as part of Phase 2 of the AHRC Centre for Irish and
Scottish Studies. It mainly concentrates on the broader rationale for exploring
‘relations and comparisons’ between modern Irish and Scottish poetry. The
project’s intellectual seed was the possibility of linking two fields in which we
are interested: modern poetry and Irish-Scottish studies. Its institutional seed
was the possibility of linking the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, established
three years ago in the School of English at Queen’s University, with Phase 2
of the AHRC Centre at Aberdeen. The Heaney Centre, directed by Ciaran
Carson, runs poetry readings and conferences. It sponsors research by staff and
graduate students, and is home to the School’s Creative Writing MA. The idea
behind the Centre, founded in celebration of Heaney’s Nobel Prize, was to
promote the writing and reading of poetry in conjunction with critical thinking about modern poetry.
As regards poetry in English – to which the project is not confined – much of
that thinking has been dominated by the Anglo-American academy. Recently
I gave a talk in Cambridge on the theme ‘Anthologising (Modern) British and
Irish Poetry’. My talk involved a critique of certain aesthetic concepts associated with contemporary ‘neo-modernist’ poets such as ‘the Cambridge School’:
concepts that derive from a particular version of literary history. In this context
I argued that American constructions of modernism have frequently led to
skewed or restricted narratives of modern poetry. I noted, for instance, that
modernist narratives often misrepresent W. B. Yeats by assimilating his work to
the theory and practice of Ezra Pound or T. S. Eliot. In fact, as the Preface to his
Oxford Book of Modern Verse (1936) indicates, Yeats’s relation to these poets,
and to what was later dubbed ‘modernism’, is dialectical at best, oppositional
at worst. To get a sense of alternative narratives, let us recall a literary-critical
This paper was written by Edna Longley in consultation with Fran Brearton in
March 2006; they are the project leaders for this strand of Phase 2 of the AHRC
Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, being undertaken in Queen’s University,
Belfast.
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Edna Longley
moment in 1919 when American, Scottish and Irish perspectives on poetry
briefly intersected.
In Devolving English Literature (1992) Robert Crawford shows that Eliot’s
influential essay, ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, was itself influenced by
G. Gregory Smith’s Scottish Literature: Character and Influence (1919), which
he had recently reviewed, and which stresses ‘the debt of each poet to his predecessors, individually and corporately’. Eliot had also just reviewed Yeats’s The
Cutting of an Agate (1919), a volume that includes Yeats’s 1907 essay ‘Poetry
and Tradition’. This essay, among other verbal parallels with Eliot, speaks of
‘seeing all in the light of European literature’. So it was cheeky of Eliot to begin
‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ with the sentence: ‘In English writing we
seldom speak of tradition’. Perhaps, however, the suppressed remnant of that
sentence is: ‘but in Scottish and Irish writing they often do’. More probably,
as Crawford argues, Eliot as an American in London, is conscious of competing ‘provincial’ claims to metropolitan authority. Hence the way in which his
Anglo-American ‘we’ appropriates ‘English writing’. Hence the fact that his
Smith review is headed ‘Was There a Scottish literature?’ and his Yeats review
‘A Foreign Mind’. Eliot speaks as self-appointed defender of a ‘powerful literature with a powerful capital’ (‘Was There a Scottish Literature?’).
There would be further twists and turns in the Eliot-Yeats relationship, and
Hugh MacDiarmid would make selective use of both. But my point is that retrospect on poetry and poetry criticism circa 1919 could have various tilts. Of
course, this equally applies to ‘English’ poetry understood in a stricter sense.
Anglo-American critical models have not necessarily touched all the interpretative bases for modern English poetry. An Irish-Scottish orientation could
open up perspectives inherent in MacDiarmid’s fine phrase about literature
‘broad-basing itself on all the diverse cultural elements and the splendid variety
of languages and dialects in the British Isles’ (‘English Ascendancy in British
Literature’, 1931). Thus there might be questions about Crawford’s splicing of
Eliot, Pound and MacDiarmid under the rubric ‘Modernism as Provincialism’.
This is not to reject an interesting argument, but to observe that it retains
‘modernism’ (a term whose instability has been exposed from other angles)
as a fixed point of reference unmodified by Irish or Scottish poetic practice,
while it also occludes aspects of that practice. Perhaps the language questions
associated with Irish or Scottish poetry do not neatly map on to the language
questions associated with American-defined modernism – even if MacDiarmid
did take inspiration from identifying Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the
Scottish Language with Ulysses: actually an Irish-Scottish ‘relation’, including
Relations and Comparisons Between Irish and Scottish Poetry
233
its problematic aspects. In Crawford’s thesis the metropolitan critical magnet pulls MacDiarmid, as it does Yeats. Similarly, I wonder about the title of
Margery Palmer McCulloch’s invaluable assemblage of ‘source documents for
the Scottish Renaissance’ (2004): Modernism and Nationalism. The actual documents open up many fissures between the title’s components. Patrick Crotty
has already done some bracing comparative work on what he calls the ‘fetishisation of modernism’ (‘a kind of streetwise variation on cultural nationalism’)
in criticism of Irish and Scottish poetry: i.e., a strategy for transcending and
outflanking ‘the English lyric’.2
I began with that moment in 1919 because we envisage this project as
potentially having significance for readings of modern poetry, beyond the rereadings of Irish and Scottish poetry that a comparative frame might promote.
As for comparison itself: it seems time for Irish-Scottish literary studies to move
into a more consistently comparative phase. Despite shining exceptions, our
unscientific impression is that historians have done more strictly comparative
work than literary scholars. The programme for the Crosscurrents conference
at Queen’s University in April 2006 shows that graduate students still largely
stick, or are kept, to separate national slots. And at the last Irish-Scottish
Academic Initiative (ISAI) conference (University of Edinburgh, September
2004) there was a shamefaced parade of senior Irish critics who said they had
meant to read some Scottish texts but hadn’t quite got round to it. I admit I
have plenty of homework to do myself, especially in the criticism of modern
Scottish poetry. Without comparative enquiry, and given the temptation
to easy analogy-spotting, dominant categories of Irish and Scottish literary
studies will survive their encounter intact, rather than mutually complicate
one another.
There is a warning in a recent book on the visual arts edited by Fintan
Cullen and John Morrison: A Shared Legacy: Essays on Irish and Scottish Art and
Visual Culture (2005). The book’s not unexpected topics include nationality,
‘political space’, and land. Reviewing A Shared Legacy in Irish Studies Review,
John Turpin keeps saying things like: ‘[Luke Gibbons’s study of ] Ireland
and colonial identity in the self-portrait of James Barry and his portrayal of
Edmund Burke . . . would have benefited from a study of Scottish artists in
London’; and, regarding Murdo McDonald’s ‘fine analysis of portrait images
of Burns’: ‘A comparison to the portraits of Tom Moore and images of his
See Patrick Crotty, ‘Shameless Bards and Mad, Abandoned Critics’, in Edna Longley,
Eamonn Hughes and Des O’Rawe (eds), Ireland (Ulster) Scotland: Concepts, Contexts,
Comparisons (Belfast, 2003), 77 – 85.
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Edna Longley
poetry would have opened up Irish visual Romanticism’. Rather desperately,
Turpin suggests that ‘readers [will] have to make whatever shared connection
they can identify, depending on their existing knowledge’. And he ends by
pointing to ‘the potential of comparative visual studies where the issues of convergence and divergence can be explored’.3 The terms convergence / divergence
seem apt. Evidently, no comparative Irish-Scottish project should take ‘sharing’ for granted. ‘Comparison’ is about difference, about distinctiveness, as
well as identity. But what do they know of Scottish or Irish poetry who only
know these rather shaky canons? Has Scottish or Irish exceptionalism been
the enemy of Scottish or Irish particularism? Academics are often interested in
poetry because it is ‘Scottish’ or ‘Irish’, not because it is poetry.
This does not apply to the two most recent surveys of modern Irish and
Scottish poetry: John Goodby’s Irish Poetry since 1950 (2000) and Christopher
Whyte’s Modern Scottish Poetry (2004). Nevertheless, these books inhabit largely different universes, and this despite similar trajectories whereby both critics
point, and see the poetry they discuss as pointing, outwith a national base.
Indeed, ‘beyond Scotland!’ or ‘out of Ireland!’ is now the common cry of Irish
and Scottish literary studies more generally. But while Whyte and Goodby
again fetishise modernism, there is relatively little detail about relations to
American practice, to any Celtic ‘other’, or to contemporaneous English poetry.
Whyte quotes Russian and French poets, and stresses that ‘Comparative readings, readings which step across the boundaries between national or linguistic
traditions, are of particular importance within the field of Scottish literature’.
Yet he makes few textual comparisons, not even in the Gaelic sphere, although
he provocatively proposes that, ‘for the past four centuries . . . the significant
intertext, rather than writing elsewhere in Scotland, would be writing in the
Irish language of the same period’.
Of course, nobody can cover all the angles. But in preparing this paper,
we have noticed a pattern whereby some Scottish commentators – on cultural
politics too – rhetorically invoke Ireland, only to move on fast. Meanwhile,
most Irish commentators don’t mention Scotland. Lady Gregory’s joke still
seems relevant: when asked about ‘the meaning of the Celtic movement we
were said to belong to’, she ‘used to say it was a movement meant to persuade
the Scotch to begin buying our books while we continued not to buy theirs’.4
In the context of poetry, a passage in the introduction to Douglas Gifford’s and
Alan Riach’s anthology Scotlands: Poets and the Nation (2004) might illustrate
Irish Studies Review, 14, 1 (February, 2006), 154 – 6.
Lady Gregory, Our Irish Theatre (1913; Gerrards Cross, 1972), 21.
3
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Scottish rhetorical use of Ireland, and perhaps subtextual frictions also noticeable elsewhere. Having said that ‘comparisons make it clear’ that the theme of
Scotland is more pronounced in Scottish literature than the national theme in
any other literature, Gifford and Riach continue: ‘Comparison with Ireland
may be particularly instructive. The feminised nation, Kathleen ni Houlihan or
Mother Ireland, is an idea so potent that many songs were made, and motives
forged, that would send men and women to martyrdom for it. Scotland too
shares some of that, particularly in its Jacobite legacy, but the modernising
trend towards imagining Scotland as a possible state (a ‘Dream State’ perhaps)
is a recognition of the pluralism the country is capable of encompassing, not
a call for constricting uniformity.’ That appears to leave Irish poetry in a perpetual archaic posture of Jacobite political incorrectness, and may even carry
a trace of the pro- and anti-enlightenment tensions evident both between and
within Irish and Scottish literary studies. In fact, a poem praised by the editors
is a contemporary Gaelic version of Kathleen ni Houlihan. And it would now
be difficult for anyone outside Sinn Fein or Notre Dame to publish an Irish
anthology entitled ‘Poets and the Nation’, even if Ireland were pluralised and
the island’s internal tensions emphasised. I note that Robert Crawford and
Mick Imlah also highlight Scottish poetry’s exceptional devotion to Scotland
in their introduction to the New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse (2000): ‘Scottish
poetry radiates, to a degree unmatched by any other substantial national literature, a passionate love of country, a sense of joy in its belonging’.
Such expressions of exceptionalism have parallels in Irish quarters, and
could be another focus for genuinely ‘instructive comparison’. This brings me
to the word ‘modern’ in our project’s title. Another unscientific impression
is that comparative or relational Irish-Scottish literary studies are taken a bit
more for granted where earlier periods are concerned, where they fold into
seventeenth-century, eighteenth-century or Romantic studies, for instance.
Here, forms of ‘New British literary history’, archipelagic criticism or ‘Atlantic’
textual cartography are fairly well under way, even if approached or theorised
in diverse terms. To frame the modern period in the same manner appears a
more problematic enterprise. That period has been critically demarcated by
how the Irish and Scottish revivals asserted the link between literature and
nationality: or asserted it in a new way – according to the premises of European
cultural nationalism. And perhaps latterday identity politics and multiculturalism have actually reinscribed habits of national segregation. Thus the
anthological and critical formula now usually applied to the contemporary
poetry of these islands, ‘British and Irish’ or ‘From Britain and Ireland’, has
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not brought poetry criticism much further. For example, Sarah Broom’s recent
book, Contemporary British and Irish Poetry is structured according to cultural
themes and along the lines of ‘There was an English poet, an Irish poet and a
Scottish poet’. Similarly, Broom’s insistence that poets are ‘constantly working
within and against . . . systems of representation’ occurs in a chapter where
Benjamin Zephaniah, Jackie Kay and Moniza Alvi are grouped under ‘Race
and Ethnicity’. Obviously there are issues here not just of critical categories but
also of critical values and criticism as value or evaluation.
If academic attention to intercourse between Irish and Scottish literature
rises in proportion to periods when the countries cohabit in some kind of union,
there can be problems here too. In The Cultural Roots of British Devolution (2004)
Michael Gardiner darkly refers to the ‘over-adaptive Enlightenment moment’.
And Liam McIlvanney and Ray Ryan remind us in their introduction to Ireland
and Scotland: Culture and Society, 1700 – 2000 (2005), an outcome of phase 1
of the AHRC Centre: ‘To advocate an Irish / Scottish framework is to establish
a political – and in some eyes, a polemical – framework for debate. Within Irish
studies, the Irish / Scottish comparison is viewed by some as unionism’s answer
to post-colonial studies.’ But conflict between unionist and nationalist models
of literary criticism – and, perhaps, conflict based on the perception of such
models – is part of the historical story. And politics of whatever stripe should be
able to take Cairns Craig’s point that concepts of nationality, in these islands
and elsewhere, do not stand alone but are shaped by ‘a much more complex
process of identity formation in . . . cultural exchange between nations’.5 This
has implications for how we read modern poetry on an archipelagic or international front.
From my viewpoint as a poetry critic, national independence, whether partial or ‘dreamed’, has written and rewritten rather too much literary history.
It has closed some literary borders and closed off some crucial data. Since
the Irish Revival and Scottish Renaissance were both spearheaded by poets,
this has particularly affected the criticism of poetry. In bearing large national
responsibilities, poetry has been simultaneously prominent – relative to its
status elsewhere – and neglected. In ‘Shameless Bards and Mad, Abandoned
Critics’ Patrick Crotty raises two related questions: how the ‘very different
legacies of Yeats and MacDiarmid’ have affected poetic practice; and how, in
both countries, ‘the critical urge has become confused in recent years with
the patriotic impulse’. A comparative study of poetry criticism would again
Cairns Craig, ‘National Literature and Cultural Capital in Scotland and Ireland’, in
Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society (Dublin, 2005), 45.
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be ‘instructive’. But a glance tells us that its weaknesses, similarly lamented
by Irish and Scottish poets, critics and poet-critics over the years – that is, by
those who desire a value-based criticism – are correlated with the fact that the
‘patriotic impulse’ in Scotland has largely run with MacDiarmid, whereas the
‘patriotic impulse’ in Ireland has largely run against Yeats. Hence the way in
which Yeats’s poetry was for decades handed over to non-Irish critics. Hence,
too, the persistence of academic criticism such as Declan Kiberd’s which conscripts poetry for a national narrative. Crotty describes Kiberd’s approach to
poetry in Inventing Ireland (1995) as ‘less an investigation of the ways poets
have invented their country than a process of making up chauvinistic arguments as he goes along, and sneaking a quick – a very quick – glance at the text
every now and again to keep the fantasia fired up’.
There is revisionist literary criticism in Scotland as in Ireland. Witness the
introduction to Beyond Scotland: new contexts for twentieth-century Scottish
literature (2004), edited by Gerard Carruthers and David Goldie, where the
editors speak of ‘the damage wrought by an over-determined, self-defeating
essentialism fostered by Scottish criticism’s overweening desire for cultural
self-determination’. Poetry, of course, can be conscripted for revisionist as
for nationalist purposes. No doubt I have done this myself. Whyte’s Modern
Scottish Poetry, like Eleanor Bell’s Questioning Scotland: Literature, Nationalism,
Postmodernism (2004), is avowedly revisionist. Thus Whyte seeks to shift the
emphasis from Scottish to poetry. Yet he also says that his book is ‘designed to
balance, counterpose and counteract’, and concludes his chapter on ‘Alternative
Approaches’ with the reconciliatory caveat: ‘The concepts of nation, national
belonging and national identity demand that our relationship to them should
also be one of play, of imagination, invention and paradoxical renewal and
reversal’. Bell is more interested in the broader field of theoretical paradigms,
and here she regards Scottish literary studies as under-theorised in comparison to
Irish literary studies – although some might find the latter either over- theorised
or selectively theorised.
As regards poetry, there is interesting convergence between Whyte and Bell.
Just as MacDiarmid’s cry was ‘Not Burns – Dunbar’, so Whyte and Bell seem
to cry ‘Not MacDiarmid – Morgan’ (a comparable Irish cry might be ‘Not
Heaney – Muldoon’). Both quote Morgan’s revision of MacDiarmid’s ‘white
rose’. With regard to Morgan, Bell resembles Whyte in talking about ‘linguistic
play and freedom to re-explore the familiar’. In some critical narratives, then,
Irish poetry and Scottish poetry have reached the same ‘playful’ place: a space
where internal difference or dissidence is recognised; where poetry is defined
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Edna Longley
as ‘re-visioning’ in Paul Muldoon’s sense; where multiple external links – even
with English poetry – are admitted. Changes in the critical fortunes of Louis
MacNeice and W. S. Graham would be another ‘instructive comparison’ or
critical barometer. But poets and poems may still outpace academic paradigms – including the ‘Not X – Y’ structure. On the evidence so far, the role of
poetry criticism in Irish and Scottish studies, and the question of how it might
‘revise’ such studies, remain unsettled.
The basic stimulus to comparative study is the complex of relations between
the terms ‘Irish’, ‘Scottish’ and ‘poetry’ in the modern period: a period that
has witnessed significant currents of influence and interchange – sometimes
strong, sometimes fitful: what I have elsewhere called the ‘revival roundabout’.6 Other elements in the rationale for this project, beyond the wider
rationale for Irish-Scottish studies, include the Yeats / MacDiarmid legacies;
language questions – not only as regards Gaelic and Scots; common cultural
factors that condition poetry, such as religion and its metaphysical fallout;
inescapable awareness of the historical ‘English lyric’; efforts to escape that
awareness; consequent contest over poetic ‘traditions’. There are many directions that a comparative approach might take: some have already been opened
up; we hope to lay other trails. This paper has touched on the possibility of
re-aligning perspectives on modern poetry; the issue not just of ‘traditions’
but of ‘tradition’; comparisons between poetry criticism in each country, and
between critical or theoretical paradigms; critical values; the problematics of
‘internationalism’ and ‘modernism’; anthologies; above all, the need for closer
comparative and intertextual readings across these islands. Form and genre
are obviously central to any study of poetry: other topics on our wish-list are
translation practices; poetic migrations; intellectual contexts; influences from
elsewhere; relations with song and folk-tradition; relations with the visual
arts; regional horizons; poetic topographies; reception and audience; material
contexts, including magazines, publishing, reviewing, readings, institutional
support, the academy, metropolises. Contributors to the project will bring
their own suggestions and interests to an evolving enquiry rather than an initially fixed agenda. We also hope to discover what kinds of comparison are
most productive in the Irish-Scottish context.
Over the project’s three years, we plan to work towards a collection of comparative essays, partly by means of themed symposia in Belfast and Aberdeen.
To involve people in the project, beyond a final essay, we will disseminate the
Edna Longley, ‘The Whereabouts of Literature’, in Beyond Scotland (Amsterdam – New
York, 2004), 159.
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position papers, given at these symposia, as critical and theoretical work-inprogress. A central element in the project is the appointment of a post-doctoral
fellow, Peter MacKay, of Glasgow University and Trinity College Dublin. A
translation study conducted separately from the book will be Hugh Magennis’s
comparison of Edwin Morgan’s and Seamus Heaney’s translations of Beowulf
(Heaney’s Beowulf papers are lodged in the Library at Queen’s University).
Finally, given the creative as well as critical objectives of the Heaney Centre,
and the annual Word festival in Aberdeen, we want to combine the symposia
with poetry readings, and to associate poet-critics with the project. Ideally the
book would include comments from contemporary Irish and Scottish poets on
their sense of the ‘other’ poetry.
Thus far no poems have been quoted, no poetic comparisons drawn. So, to
finish, I will juxtapose poems by Edwin Morgan and Louis MacNeice. Both
employ the ‘island’ trope – an undoubted common resort of modern Irish and
Scottish poetry. Eleanor Bell highlights Morgan’s sonnet ‘Outward Bound’,
in which ‘Scotland begins to move’, and thus eludes efforts to pin it down:
‘Like a sea-washed log/ it loved to tempt earnest geographers, / duck down
and dub them drunk hydrographers, / shake itself dry, no longer log but dog’.
There are parallels here with MacNeice’s ‘No More Sea’, written forty years
earlier, a postwar poem that derives from a sojourn on Achill Island. ‘No More
Sea’ celebrates ‘Islanders whose hearts themselves are islands’. It ends with a
retrospect from a darker future condition, in which ‘some atavistic scholar’
might conceive ‘a vague inaccurate notion / Of what it meant to live embroiled
with ocean / And between moving dunes and beyond reproving / Sentry-boxes
to have been self-moving’. It’s possible to read these island-parables as figuring a
fluidly diverse, rather than monolithic, Scotland or Ireland. But it’s also possible
to read them, where they meet out at sea, as warnings about attaching poetry
to predetermined academic categories – including Irish / Scottish relations and
comparisons.
Queen’s University Belfast
Michael Gardiner
Although accelerated by the questions of being and becoming which accompanied the cultural push for determination in the 1980s and ’90s, much of the
intellectual backbone of James Kelman’s work corresponds to a longer intellectual tradition based in Glasgow. Scottish existentialism particularly became
politicised in the mid to late 1960s in terms of post-Sartrean thought and
anti-psychiatry, typically associated with in R. D. Laing. Still under-discussed
is the fact that many of Laing’s concerns predate those of Deleuze, and indeed
are, mostly positively, referred to by Deleuze as pre-dating many of his concerns.1 By 1972, when the links between capitalism, subject-interpellation in
the Althusserian sense, and paranoia, were sketched in Deleuze and Guattari’s
Anti-Oedipus, Laing had been hinting at similar clinical / critical connections
for over a decade; just over a decade later again in Laing’s Glasgow, Kelman’s
The Busconductor Hines (1984) signalled a new direction in narration in its
shifting – in Deleuzian terms, a schizoid shifting – between first and third
persons, and correspondingly between dialects, later more confidently reconfigured as languages – an exaggeratedly correct English and a non-Synthetic
Scots. This narratology of recovering action by unsettling voices was perfected
by Kelman for a further decade, to How Late It Was, How Late (1994), the
book for which he won the Booker Prize, and the one which I am here describing as his most Deleuzian.
This novel describes, to the tune of almost 400 pages, a protagonist determined to ‘batter on’ in the face of imprisonment, breakup, and inexplicable
blindness. Its hero, Sammy Samuels, has typically been described as ‘hardy’
or ‘stoic’; I think we can take this more seriously and describe how Sammy’s
walking round the streets blinded, ceaselessly present and ceaselessly in action,
shows an unwillingness to accept lack. Deleuze and Guattari’s argument in
Cf. Craig Beveridge and Ronald Turnbull, ‘Recent Scottish Thought’, in Cairns Craig
(ed.), The History of Scottish Literature Volume 4 (Aberdeen, 1987), 61 – 74; Gardiner,
The Cultural Roots of British Devolution, 90 – 6; Claire Colebrook, Deleuze (London,
2002), 5; Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
(Minnesota, 1983; 1972), 84 et passim.
1
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Michael Gardiner
Anti-Oedipus is that lack is not, as Freud describes it, an originary state which
creates desire, but a blockage to desire, produced by capitalism working through
the law (of the father and of the state):
To a certain degree, the traditional logic of desire is all wrong from the
very outset: from the very first step that the Platonic logic of desire
forces us to take, making us choose between production and acquisition. From the moment that we place desire on the side of acquisition,
we make desire an idealistic (dialectical, nihilistic) conception, which
causes us to look upon it as primarily a lack: a lack of an object, a lack
of the real object.2
In How Late there is no sense of acquisition, that is, in the production of surplus capital as a guard against loss, merely in what is needed to deal with the
contingent. Thus:
[i]ts a game but so it is man life, fucking life I’m talking about, that’s
all ye can do man start again, turn ower a new leaf, a fresh start, another yin, ye just plough on, ye plough on, ye just fucking plough on,
that’s what ye do, that was what Sammy did, what else was there I
mean fuck all, know what I’m saying, that’s what ye do, that was what
Sammy did, what else was there I mean fuck all, know what I’m saying, fuck all.3
The law enacts various types of violence, physical and epistemological, on
Sammy, who remains unaware of any ‘original’ reason for this, having blacked
out and then co-operated with the police to the best of his abilities. The Law
works here very much as it does in the work of Beckett: Sammy has built up a
resistance to seeking any transcendental metaphor to explain the law’s behaviour:
Ye cannay make contact with them; all you would have got was sarcasm
and wee in-jokes . . . [a]nd it was always them, these bastards, always at
their convenience, every single last bit of time, it was always them that
chose it; ye never had any fucking choices . . .4
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 25, 58 – 61, 306 – 307.
James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late (London, 1998; 1994), 37.
4
Ibid., 19, 32.
2
3
243
Trying to get him to understand that there is something originally wrong with
him, preventing physical contact with the world in all its contingency, the law
tries to force upon Sammy a sense of lack. He has, it tells him, no fucking
choices. Rather than simply acting by walking to his next goal, he is required
to be on a quest for something missing, to be ‘normally dysfunctional’ in the
Oedipal sense of having experienced a deflection of his desire by law. He is
even pre-Oedipalised by a beating which has blinded him, like Oedipus, at
some ‘traumatic’ point before the start of the action. But while the law sends
him on a quest to search for something wrong with himself, Sammy frustrates
the law by registering the unknown origin of his blindness without any great
wish to return to a primal scene and ‘solve’ the problem:
He studied roundabout, looking for chinks of light, to where the screw
would be watching, the flash of the eye maybe; but nothing. He reached
his hand ower the bunk and felt about the floor and found something, a
shoe; he lifted it to in front of his face. He fucking smelled it man it was
fucking ponging, but he couldnay see it; whose fucking shoes were they
they werenay fucking his, that was a certainty. He was definitely blind
but. Fucking weird. Wild. It didnay feel like a nightmare either, that’s
the funny thing. Even psychologically. In fact it felt okay, an initial wee
flurry of excitement but no what you would call panic-stations. Like it
was just a new predicament. Christ it was even making him smile, shaking his head at the very idea, imagining himself telling people; making
Helen laugh; she would be annoyed as fuck but she would still find it
funny, eventually, once they had made it up, the stupit fucking row they
had had, total misunderstanding man but it was fine now, it would be
fine, once she saw him.
Now he was chuckling away to himself. How the hell was it happening to him! It’s no as if he was earmarked for glory!
Even in practical terms, once the nonsense passed, he started thinking about it; this was a new stage in life, a development. A new epoch!5
The law in response sets up endless series of questions designed to undermine Sammy’s sense of humanity. He shuffles around blinded, and in a way
which strongly recalls Beckett’s Molloy – as also discussed in various places by
Deleuze – is asked unanswerable questions about time he has forgotten, by
Ibid., 10 – 11.
5
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Michael Gardiner
those under the umbrella of the law: ‘[a] fag got put in his hand. The auld
psychology. The one place they acted like people was when they were in their
own wee office going about their own wee bits of business, wage-earners, timeservers, waiting for the fucking tea-break’.6
In the early stages of Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari describe the questioning of Molloy, and the police’s similarly relentless demand that Molloy
should ‘clarify’ things by saying and fixing names, even when the repetition
of names undermines sense – producing a lack in the apparent move toward
completeness.7 The law’s aim of course, in neither Sammy’s nor Molloy’s case,
is to get information anyway – it has all the information it needs, indeed is
in control of the very conditions via which information is legitimised – but
rather to place the anti-hero, to subject him. Sammy would be obeying the
law, like Kafka’s Josef K in Deleuze and Guattari’s Kafka, by becoming an
unfaithful recorder, sticking to one voice or register as the story.8 Instead,
the speaker-actor is, as Timothy Murphy points out of the Deleuzian reading
of Beckett’s anti-heroes (and like Alan Warner’s Kelmanesque The Man Who
Walks), the one without lack, who proactively paces, resisiting lack, striding
uphill.9 Sammy is disarmingly straight and un-metaphorical: he will partake
of no lack as he will partake of no metaphor.10 Anti-Oedipus, and more so,
Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, are known for breaking the
law by breaking down generic categories; here the literary is concerned with
effects stripped of metaphor, of the need to automatically naturalise. All narrative, all law, begins in fiction.11
But pace Deleuze, and despite the claim Kelman makes at the outset of
his later long essay on Kafka, the majority of critics do not attempt to provide meanings for literary texts, and most haven’t done so since the 1960s.12
The claim itself, though probably directed at academics Kelman feels are misrepresenting his stories, shows a disappointing bad faith in a fencing off of
the literary (as ‘novel’, ‘poem’, and so on) – even in the middle of an essay
Ibid., 15.
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 12 – 14.
8
Franz Kafka, The Trial, trans. Edwin and Willa Muir, in The Complete Novels (London,
1999 (1935)), 11 – 128.
9
Timothy S. Murphy, ‘Only Intensities Subsist: Samuel Beckett’s Nohow On’, in eds. Ian
Buchanan and John Marks, Deleuze and Literature (Edinburgh, 2000), 229 – 50: 231;
Alan Warner, The Man Who Walks (London, 2002).
10
Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 38 – 41.
11
Cf. Jacques Derrida, trans. Avital Ronell and Christine Roulston, ‘Before the Law’, in
ed. Derek Attridge, Acts of Literature (London, 1992), 181 – 220: 191 – 9.
12
James Kelman, ‘A Look at Kafka’s Three Novels’, 265.
6
7
245
he would himself plainly view as ‘critical’. As Deleuze realised, the literary
does not work in terms of an opposition of the creative and the critical: what
makes a text literary is its effects rather than its typology, what it makes happen in the world rather than its signification of something absent. But it is
precisely this proactiveness of the literary that prevents any one writer from
bracketing off her own work as literary – a problem nevertheless remaining
where Scotland and Ireland still seem eager to be remembered in terms of
‘schools’, with writing and criticism clearly separated. As the two nations
gather confidence post-imperially, post-Good Friday, post-devolution, the
categories can surely only collapse to proactive writing – an outcome of which
Beckett would have approved. The closing down of the literary possibilities of all writing – rather than only those texts which have passed through a
publishing filter for generic approval – is in Deleuzian terms itself classically
bourgeois.
Sammy Samuels, far from classically bourgeois, rather than accepting his
lack and seeking a Freudian cure, takes each of the innumerable problems the
law hands him as another starting-point for an endless becoming. He is not in
search of any final signified – or, to put it into a more Scottish historical context, of the dream of a ‘correct English’, an enabling Scotto-British rhetoric,
via which Scots haunted themselves from Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric
through James Beattie and Thomas Carlyle and Lord Reith’s BBC to the antitheory-squads of the 1980s. (Nor, indeed, is Kelman interested in Synthetic
Scots or ‘correct Scots’, whose moments have certainly passed and which was
itself classist). Where lack would interpolate Sammy, it doesn’t strike him to
think of himself as being in debt. He is indebted to no-one, the bold Sammy,
the bold yin, and, taking step by step in the present, itself a postcolonial phenomenon, refuses to swallow the idea that a solution to an interpolated lack
would allow him one day to get back to square one, wherever that was.13 Square
one is for squares.
Sammy’s having to pay for his black-out with his sight, though, is also a terrible playing out of the two Renaissances’ (1920s-30s, 1950s-60s) sponsorship
of drunkenness and the nationalist punting of ‘Scotch whisky’ – most obviously
in the MacDiarmid of ‘A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle’, but also in the second-renaissance prose of David Daiches and others into ‘our’ national drink – a
critical tendency which we can see at its peak pre-1979. The contradiction
here is that alcohol is a corporeal form of debt par excellence, not only in the
Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 247; the debtor must also be kept alive to keep
the debt alive – see Deleuze, ‘To Have Done With Judgment’.
13
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Michael Gardiner
Kelman-anecdotal sense of owing folk rounds and navigating Glasgow by pubs
(like Beckett’s any-space-whatever, Sammy’s space is physical but also fucking
mental),14 but also in that alcohol acts with a depressant effect, one which is
always paid for later at extortionate rates of interest. Societies which rely heavily on alcohol as an everyday social drug are also likely to be ones which rely
heavily on debt (note, for example, the United Kingdom’s disposition towards
credit cards and heavy mortgaging). The reliance on alcohol disappears, most
obviously, in Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, and other writers falling under the
idea of a ‘chemical generation’ (a concept partly behind Christie March’s flawed
argument that these writers have somehow overtaken Kelman),15 and in other
rave-influenced aesthetics, in which there is a sense of looking back over the
ecstasy revolution, which promoted touch, an eternal concern in the prose of
Kelman, and reflected in How Late from the outset in the ‘pat-a-cake-games’
necessary for him to feel his way around. Writers influenced by the aesthetics
of ecstasy simply tend to be much more interested in the tactile than the whatare-you-looking-at culture of vision. The cultural value of alcohol is subtly
critiqued throughout Kelman’s oeuvre, where talk of pubs and carry-outs is as
first glance crass, but on closer inspection increasingly subtle and sometimes
despairingly proactive, especially in his later work.
In Sammy’s proactively schizo narrative, in the Deleuzian terms used of
Kafka, first person often takes the form of third-person talk.16 Kelman writes
in an extreme form of Deleuzian free indirect style, meaning that he ‘uses the
third person to describe single characters from the point of view of a received
and anonymous language’.17 Through this narrative technique, whose sophistication is missed by critics who see his ‘demotic’ prose as a simple downward
identification,18 Kelman takes advantage of a habit of third-person address in
Scottish English speech (‘up he gets’; ‘he’s off and running’; ‘the bold Sammy’)
to enact a prose not fixed to the first person, but always becoming a nominal
third person who never reaches omniscience. Cairns Craig’s detailed account of
Cf. Deleuze, ‘The Exhausted’, in Essays Critical and Clinical, 152 – 74.
Cristie L. March, Rewriting Scotland: Welsh. McLean, Warner, Banks, Galloway, and Kennedy
(Manchester, 2002).
16
Cf. the plateau ‘Memories of a Haecceity’, in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (London, 1987; 1980), 260 – 5.
17
Colebrook, Deleuze, 114; in Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, ‘the essential
thing, precisely in free indirect discourse, is to be found neither in language A, nor
language B, but “in language X, which is none other than language A in the actual
process of becoming language B”’, 106.
18
On the dangers, perceived or real, of a counter-Thatcher proletarianisation of culture,
see Petrie, Contemporary Scottish Fictions, 19.
14
15
247
how Kelman ‘translates’ between persons and dialects can be read in this sense:
Sammy is ‘resisting arrest’ by resisting placement in any one normative neurosis, by being, as it were, a walking schizophrenic – the character with whom
Deleuze and Guattari start their 1972 study.19 Like Kafka, Kelman takes on and
temporarily occupies ‘other’ registers, rendering them strange and discordant,
always ‘translated’.20 And as in Wilhelm Reich, an identification with the individual leader, father of the familial or State law – or in Deleuze, with the abstract
‘man’ as such – and the need to get back to a perfect form or an abstract law, is
rejected in the endlessly contingent schizo stroll.21 Sammy votes with his feet.
Where lack fixes the person to a life of working for some final purpose,
of earning her way back to normality (in Freud, the ‘normally neurotic’), for
Sammy, as for Delueze’s schizoids and for Beckett’s oddly contextless somnambulists, the only thing that really never changes is that things are always
changing. Sammy continues to batter on without any nostalgic or clinical wish
for things to be as they once were, or as the law in its many forms may want
him to believe they once were. Nor even does he view his blindness as a lack,
rather seeing it as part of a continuous process of transition – without metaphor. For Sammy there is no question of a hidden referent. His speech doesn’t
relate to something which is missing, in an effort to recover it; rather, he is
constantly becoming through his speech; that is, he is aware (as Kelman writes
it out, in Scottish existentialist terms) that his language is more about effect
than it is about reference. He is more interested in what his communications
cause to occur than in whether they place him satisfactorily within any given
social narrative. Nor is his track of time any too reliable: where Beckett tends
to spread the present out until it is too thin to carry normal narration, Sammy
often, as in both Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, imports memory into
the present in an irreducible doubleness.22 Sammy’s aims change throughout
Craig, The Modern Scottish Novel, 99 – 106; Cairns Craig, ‘Resisting Arrest’, 99 – 114;
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 1 – 8.
20
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan
(Minneapolis, 1986; 1975), 19; cf. Deleuze and Guattari, the plateaus ‘Memories
of a Haecceity’ and ‘Memories of a Molecule’ in A Thousand Plateaus, 260 – 86; cf.
Colebrook, Deleuze, 126 – 9; Craig, The Modern Scottish Novel, 99 – 106. Kelman makes
this ‘translation’ absolutely explicit in Translated Accounts (London, 2001); cf. Drew
Milne, ‘Broken English: James Kelman’s Translated Accounts ’, Edinburgh Review 108
(2001), 106 – 15.
21
Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, trans. Vincent R. Carfagno
(Harmondsworth, 1975; 1933).
22
Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 291 – 8; Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The
Movement-Image, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London, 1986); cf.
19
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Michael Gardiner
according to what is happening to him; he doesn’t hold one single ideal of
returning to any teleology promising to take him back to some originary position.23 His experience is a constant process of repetition with difference, a
distancing himself from what he once was and what he is supposed to be, in
order to become something slightly different and thus to acknowledge the personal nature of his participation in history. Even his name, Sammy Samuels,
enacts this Deleuzian difference-with-repetition and stands as a kind of affront
to the nomenclature of respectable, lack-carrying persons.
Moreover, in How Late, impressions are registered on a recording surface.
Blinded, Sammy has to feel the grain of his environment; he is reliant on
the pure contingency of present contact, of being in touch. Like Deleuze’s
Kafka’s Josef K, Sammy is out of touch with a law which is material yet
unknowable, being perpetually pushed from one inadequate explanation to
the next.24 His given role is to forever try to recover a stable place before
the law; yet his struggle as a participant in history is to create difference
from this given position.25 His personal future as underwritten by the law of
lack is always avenir, to come, always postponed and requiring a wait which
is itself acknowledged by your man as an action, during which he goes on
becoming something slightly different.26 And since he is blind, the world is
inscribed, historically, on his body. He records like a record27 – unlike, for
example, a CD. (And, as Uwe Zagratzki argues, the rhythms and themes
of black American blues voice, familiar from scratchy old vinyls, echoes
throughout How Late).28 Both Anti-Oedipus and How Late have a record-like
spiral structure:29 where Anti-Oedipus introduces concepts briefly and then
returns to them periodically in modified forms, How Late allows personal
concerns to arise, be forgotten, and reappear as if for the first time after some
event has moved Sammy into some other situation.30 This post- Humean
Claire Cloebrook, Deleuze, 33.
Cf. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (London, 1994; 1968),
291 – 3.
24
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 14.
25
Cf. Kafka, ‘Before the Law’; Jacques Derrida Acts of Literature, ed. Derek Attridge
(London, 1992), 181 – 220.
26
Cf. Jacques Derrida, Voyous: Deux Essais sur la Raison (Paris, 2003).
27
Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, 76 – 9.
28
Uwe Zagratzki, ‘“Blues Fell This Morning”: James Kelman’s Scottish Literature and
Afro-American Music’, in Scottish Literary Journal 27 – 1 (Spring 2000).
29
Cf. Deleuze on Beckett in ‘The Greatest Irish Film (Beckett’s “Film”)’, in Deleuze,
Essays Critical and Clinical, 23 – 6.
30
Cf. Michael Hardt, online guide to Anti-Oedipus taken from his own university guide:
23
249
process shiftily removes Sammy from the state-happy police / polis: as Paul
Patton and John Protevi put it, ‘reading strategies and interest in institutional
powers have an affinity’.31
In this sense Kelman and Deleuze are modernist in the manner of Gertrude
Stein (rather than Eliot or even Joyce); leitmotifs appear throughout their texts
without any overall structuring principle to them, making them ‘difficult’.32
But this needn’t imply an Adorno-esque division of high and low culture.33
Nor, however, does it mean that Kelman is playing class-hero by identifying
with the ‘bottom’. Such perspectival, hands-off topographies are done away
with if one takes seriously Deleuze’s ideas on becoming rather than identifying
a place of being.
And, as in Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of Kafka, Kelman can be
perfectly described as a minor writer. His is a literature of affect and becoming, rather than a majoritarian one which represents something assumed to be
already there. In the Deleuzian sense Scotland as a whole is a minor nation,
having no state citizenship and always having to ‘become’ out of, or to create a
repetition with difference from, essentialist images, since there is nothing else
of substance. In Deleuze’s Essays Critical and Clinical, literature is no less than
the creation of a people.34 Here of course ‘minor’ does not imply unimportant,
or somehow small,35 though Kelman’s work is also ‘minor’ in the less Deleuzian
sense of a refusal to court marketability. Rather, Deleuze and Guattari define
the minor thus:
A minor literature doesn’t come from a minor language; it is rather that
which a minority constructs within a major language. But the first characteristic of minor literature in any case is that in it language is affected
with a high coefficient of deterritorialisation . . . The impossibility of
not writing because national consciousness, uncertain or oppressed,
necessarily exists by means of literature . . . The second characteristic
of minor literatures is that everything in them is political . . . The third
www.duke.edu/~hardt/Deleuze&Guattari.html.
See introduction to Paul Patton and John Protevi (eds), Between Deleuze and Derrida
(London, 2003), 3.
32
As in, for example, Gertrude Stein, Three Lives: Stories of the Good Anna, Melanetha, and
the Gentle Lena (New York, 1994; 1909).
33
Cf. Theodor Adorno, ‘Perennial Fashion: Jazz’, in Brian O’ Connor (ed.), The Adorno
Reader (Oxford, 2000), 267 – 79.
34
Deleuze, ‘Literature and Life’, in Essays Critical and Clinical, 1 – 6: 4.
35
Cf. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 291.
31
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Michael Gardiner
characteristic of a minor literature is that in it everything takes on a collective value.36
In A Thousand Plateaus, ‘major’ and ‘minor’ are even separated out as two
treatments of the same language, or further as two functions of language as
such, where the two terms are in relation.37 And the minor writer can ‘[u]se
the minor language to send the major language racing’ (an apt term given the
frequency of betting-shop chancers in Kelman’s early stories).38 Kelman is at a
proactive tangent to ‘English Literature’, where this phrase means not ‘literature from England’ or ‘literature in English’, but a literary discourse of moving
towards a central authority relying on an ‘English’ which has given up its borders on assuming empire (see Dilke and other late nineteenth-century writers
on the mobility of the English polis) and traditionally working via characters
looking towards a major socio-historical centre.39
English Literature has in the main been marked by this activity of pointing
towards a pre-existent subject – for example Georgianism, a reaction to
urbanisation and multiculturalism, was, it is strange to reflect, contemporary
with Kafka, and Claire Colebook rightly exemplifies Rupert Brooke’s ‘The
Soldier’ as major literature – language pointing back to a self-pre-existing the
language used, further stabilised by an un-playful obedience to the metre most
connoting correct English Language as it has been fixed in tradition.40 A more
extreme example of this would be the poetry of the even more Georgian Enoch
Powell, Tory power-broker behind the coming to power of Thatcher, metrically
perfect in a Latinate way (and late-imperial prescriptive grammars typically
assumed Latin constructions as being more authoritative than English ones),41
pathologically averse to reversing a metrical foot, whose poetry is murder
polis. Powell stands for an idea of England so ‘prior’ that its Thatcherite echoes
necessarily split a British union which looked almost nothing like England
at the time Kelman came to prominence.42 Britishness in the ’80s and ’90s
Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka, 16 – 17.
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 103 – 5.
38
Ibid., 105.
39
Cf. Edward Said, ‘Jane Austen and Imperialism’ and ‘The Cultural Integrity of Empire’,
in Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1994), 80 – 97 and 97 – 110.
40
Colebrook, Deleuze, 119 – 20.
41
Cf. Lynda Mugglestone, ‘”Proper English” and the Politics of Standard Speech’
in Kevin Robins and David Morley (eds), British Cultural Studies (Oxford, 2001),
181 – 94.
42
Cf. Anthony Barnett, This Time: Our Constitutional Revolution (London, 1997).
36
37
251
pressed ahead with increasing puzzlement in its role of building on a prior
subject always undefined (because major), and preventing the becoming of
Britain’s ‘minor’ nations – including England itself.
How Late is not the only Kelman story to have a highly Kafkaesque turn;
another example is his brilliant short story ‘The Block’, which again shows
marked similarities to the interpolated guilt or lack of The Trial, and sees a
milkman witness a man fall from the sky, to find that this act of bearing witness
puts him in some unspecific way in trouble with the police.43 A further irony is
the fact that in Glasgow pronunciation ‘block’ can be very close to ‘bloke’ – did
he see a thing or a man? Is he really somehow involved? A further significance
comes in the Deleuze / Guattari notion of the block in A Thousand Plateaus,
in which ‘every becoming is a block of coexistence’,44 a block being formed by
two asymmetrical movements.45 Kafka’s obsession with the guilt of witnessing
the grey area between human and inhuman, the omniscient and experiential,
is a recurrent theme in inter-referendum Scotland. Irvine Welsh’s story ‘The
Granton Star Transfer’ (1994), for example, candidly pinches the idea of
Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ by turning its speaker into a bluebottle.46
So, sensitised to the problems of representation in a city of a nation with no
state, one in which learning a foreign dialect / language had become a requisite
of passing into a realm of global success,47 Kafka, like those immediately before
him, was deeply concerned with the relationship between representation and
effect, and this returns in Scottish Literature of the 1970s to 1990s which
overturns the British ideas of global success of the post-union period. In Edwin
Morgan’s celebrated ‘The First Men on Mercury’, travelling earthlings with
broadly well-intentioned imperialist designs, far from having their desired
effect, are gradually corrupted by meaningless sound in a face-off with native
Mercurians, whose phonetic nonsense appears more and more meaningful
until the groups exchange places,48 and the Mercurians even seem to have a
phonetic affiliation with Glasgow speech.49
James Kelman, ‘The Block’, in Kelman, Not Not While The Giro (London, 1989; 1983),
99 – 106.
44
Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 292.
45
Ibid., 293 – 4; the section on blocks is 291 – 309.
46
Irvine Welsh, ‘The Granton Star Transfer’, in Welsh, The Acid House (London, 1995;
1994), 120 – 36.
47
Cf. a number of essays in Robert Crawford (ed.), The Scottish Invention of English
Literature (Cambridge, 1998).
48
Edwin Morgan, ‘The First Men on Mercury’, in Morgan, Collected Poems (Manchester,
1990), 267 – 8.
49
W. N. Herbert, ‘Morgan’s Words’, in Robert Crawford and Hamish White (eds), About
43
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Michael Gardiner
The Glasgow movement of concrete poetry / sound poetry, inaugurated by
Morgan and Ian Hamilton Finlay in 1963, in which the idea of representation
is central, has no real equivalent in English Literature, at least until the 1970s,
and even then in a de-politicised form.50 This Scottish movement of concrete
poetry, moreover, is also exactly coincident with Laing’s refusal to accept the
placement of the solid subject, again predicated on lack, in capitalist societies,
a thinking that would feed into Anti-Oedipus. Laing’s 1967 prosepoem ‘The
Bird of Paradise’ can also be seen as having a Morgan-like concern with the
sliding affective image over the ‘vertical’ or connotative metaphor.51 One of
Laing’s most significant early (co-written) works was a guide to the thought of
Jean-Paul Sartre;52 and Kelman, as I have suggested, belongs to the same tradition, read via a Sartrean and post-Sartrean existentialism signalled by a close
relationship with French literature, and domesticated by figures like Alexander
Trocchi, Glaswegian-Italian writer resident in Paris and relentless champion,
in his 1950s journal Merlin, of the then little-known Samuel Beckett.
Edwin Morgan (Edinburgh, 1990), 65 – 74.
Cf. Michael Gardiner, ‘Towards a Post-British Theory of Modernism: Speech and
Vision in Edwin Morgan’, Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies 11.2 (November 2002),
133 – 46.
51
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 265 – 6; R. D. Laing, ‘The Bird of Paradise’,
in Laing, The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise (Harmondsworth, 1967),
171 – 90; Gardiner, The Cultural Roots of British Devolution, 90 – 6.
52
R. D. Laing and David Cooper, Reason and Violence: A Decade of Sartre’s Philosophy
(London, 1964).
50
Stateless Nation / Nationless State: History, Anomaly and
Devolution in Scottish and Northern Irish Writing
Aaron Kelly
Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have long been the site of dominant,
sedimented discourses claiming their historical anomaly within a broader
framework of the normal development of the nation state. It is devolution in
both cases which supposedly helps wrestle Scotland and the North of Ireland
toward a liberal, democratic historical norm. For example, with regard to
Scotland, David McCrone’s work is paradigmatic in establishing a sense of
a pre-devolution Scotland without its own political institutions as a stateless
nation, a nation without a state. By implication, then, Scotland stands as an
anomaly, a miscarried version of the normative process by which historical
development reconciles nation with state, state with nation. By extension, devolution permits at least some democratic redress. And in relation to the normal
model of the nation state, so too Northern Ireland appears anomalous. For is
Northern Ireland a nation? Not really, it is rather, at the very least, the collision of two nations, and, in the Peace Process, the duty of care of two nation
states (the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic). So the Northern Irish
state, according to the normative model of historical development, is a state
without a nation, a nationless state. Perhaps most notably, David Lloyd deems
the ‘post-colonial moment’ of collision to produce an anomalous state in regard
to the North.1 This essay seeks to contest the effort to regard Scotland and the
North of Ireland in terms of peculiarity and anomaly and suggests instead that
specificity and intensity should be the terms of engagement. In particular, I
challenge the democratic credentials of mainstream devolution by first undermining the normative historical paradigms upon which its enfranchisement
is based. Such paradigms of historical development, I suggest, both maintain
and repress specific sets of social inequality that are perpetuated rather than
restituted by institutional devolution of power in contemporary Britain. By
examining the live antagonisms of Scottish and Northern Irish writing it is
also possible to resist peculiarising both cultures and societies, and in doing
so, to refract instead the questions they raise back upon the codes of historical
David Lloyd, Anomalous States: Irish Writing and the Post-Colonial Moment (Dublin, 1993),
10.
1
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Aaron Kelly
normality against which they are judged and to undermine those paradigms
of normalcy.
In terms of Scottish writing, the sitting of a devolved parliament on 12
May 1999 and the onset of the twenty-first century have elicited numerous repositionings and re-periodizations of Scotland and its culture. In an example
that is typical, Catherine Lockerbie, director of the Edinburgh International
Book Festival, has commented in conversation with Alan Massie that
now devolution has been achieved, people don’t have to prove they are
Scottish writers anymore . . . I think we’ve moved on from the days
of the stereotypical writer. Young writers don’t have to write those quasi-political novels. I think we’ll find something more interesting and
individual from them, rather than following that old path. The chip on
the shoulder has been turned into a twiglet if you like and the Scottish
cultural cringe has certainly diminished.2
There are a number of complacent assumptions in this statement concerning
the relationship of culture, pre- and post-devolution, to politics and
socio-economics which need to be unpacked. Firstly, the designation of
pre-devolution writing as ‘quasi-political’ seems disingenuous given that
the standard critical narrative positions the post-1979 cultural realm as
the space wherein authority and identity are devolved in a manner that
actually adumbrates the institutional devolution of power in 1998 through
the Scotland Act.3 Secondly, Lockerbie’s comment raises a question as to
precisely what that ‘quasi-politics’ might be. Lockerbie’s assertion explicitly
suggests that it was the national question which so pre-occupied culture
before devolution and, even more mechanistically, that writers such as
James Kelman (who is Lockerbie’s main target) were primarily engaged in
proving their Scottishness in a fashion that confirms some pre-ordained
and ‘stereotypical’ paradigm. Implicitly underpinning Lockerbie’s views is a
teleological narrative which avers that devolution demarcates some (vaguely
defined) normativity that has now been broached and which may set aside, in
some new dispensation, those former ‘quasi-political’ antagonisms. And the
Massie, Alan. ‘Sir Walter’s Scoterati’, Scotland on Sunday 16 June 2002. Review, 1
The most brilliant and nuanced analyses of such cultural politics are proffered by Cairns
Craig’s Out of History: Narrative Paradigms in Scottish and British Culture (Edinburgh,
1996) and The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination (Edinburgh,
1999); and Michael Gardiner’s The Cultural Roots of British Devolution (Edinburgh,
2004).
2
3
Stateless Nation / Nationless State
255
consequence of such normalization, for Lockerbie, is to be the re-issuing of
the ‘individual’ untainted by a now resolved Scottishness.
Similarly, Christopher Whyte, in an essay specifically on masculinity
in contemporary Scottish culture, has maintained that ‘In the absence of
an elected political authority, the task of representing the nation has been
repeatedly devolved to its writers . . . one can hope that the setting-up of
a Scottish parliament will at last allow Scottish literature to be literature first
and foremost, rather than the expression of a nationalist movement’.4 The
main, and indeed laudable, purpose of Whyte’s analysis is to critique violent
masculine paradigms but it is notable that the reactionary crisis of gender
identity perceived by Whyte is located in a broader national malaise and
disempowerment that, once more, may be resolved by devolved political power.
Both Lockerbie and Whyte assume that pre-devolution culture compensates
for some national democratic deficit that is redressed by devolution so that,
with the nation restored and political institutions returned, literature may
also reclaim its privileged autonomy. Herein resides a misguided reduction
of the political to the national and a concomitant advocacy of a disengaged,
individualised art. According to such a proposition, just as Scotland attains
a normative model of national development that confirms yet paradoxically
obsoletes its nationhood, so too its literature tautologically reproduces itself as
literature in an economy of normalcy beyond politics and history.
It is this literary concern with wrestling Scottish writing from a supposedly
anomalous ‘quasi-politics’ that is embedded in the long-established sedimentation of sociological, socio-economic and political discourse positioning
Scotland as peculiar, as the miscarried version of a European national developmental norm, that I have sought to identify. David McCrone formulates
Scotland’s peculiarity thus:
In terms of its structural position in the historical development of the
capitalist world economy Scotland is doubly unique. Britain as a whole
was the first state to have a thoroughgoing capitalist revolution; second,
Scotland’s capitalist revolution occurred within a country lacking the
political and institutional structures of statehood. Further . . . such
a transformation occurred before the ideological input of nationalism
which was to inform the political and economic features of capitalist
industrialisation in much of Europe . . . Scotland crossed ‘the great
Christopher Whyte, ‘Masculinities in Contemporary Scottish Fiction’, Forum for Modern
Language Studies, Vol. 34, no. 3 (1998), 274 – 85, 284.
4
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Aaron Kelly
divide’ to become an industrialised society without the benefit or hindrance of nationalism, which usually acted as a political or ideological
vehicle for much of the European bourgeoisie. Further, Scotland’s economy was rarely if ever self-contained and independent. It was an open
economy, reliant on external capital and technology, and subject to the
vagaries of the broader economic and political environment, whether of
Britain or a wider European capitalist economy.5
So, according to the teleological narrative of this argument, where England
developed and matured organically, Scotland retarded and splintered. Equally,
Tom Nairn also perceives Scotland as an anomaly outside the norms of historical progress and concludes that ‘an anomalous historical situation could
not engender a “normal” culture’. In this kind of interpretation, the politics
of Scottish culture are never experienced in the terms of their own specificity
and intensity, for live, disruptive and constitutive antagonisms, such as social
class, instead become the depleted tokens of someone else’s normality. Nairn
comments: ‘The opposite of mature all-roundedness is presumably infantile
partiality, or fragmentariness’.6 In a confirmation of the bourgeois narrative
underpinning the progressive model of historical development, the insinuation ghosting such pronouncements is that Scotland would have been normal
if only it had evolved a mature and well-rounded middle-class. The implication
is that nations, peoples, individuals or classes which do not produce culture
in its normative form are not merely different but abnormal, aberrant and,
according to the bourgeois narrative of historical development, immature or
not fully formed social subjects or constituencies. For Theodor Adorno, the
effort to diagnose a social formation according to a grammar of health and
normalcy itself betrays a bourgeois narrative of historical development: ‘the
dichotomy of healthy / sick is as undialectical as that of the rise and fall of
the bourgeoisie, which itself derives its norms from a bourgeois consciousness
that has failed to keep pace with its own development’.7 Adorno’s account
of the bourgeoisie’s periodic incapacity to plot its own historical dynamic of
perpetual change permits a fundamental revision of the bourgeois narrative
David McCrone, Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation (London, 1992),
35.
6
Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism (London, 1981), 155,
157.
7
Adorno, Theodor W. ‘Reconciliation Under Duress’. Aesthetics and Politics: Debates
Between Bloch, Lukács, Brecht, Benjamin, Adorno, trans. Ronald Taylor (London, 1977),
151 – 76, 156.
5
257
underscoring the disposition of Scotland according to historical paradigms of
prior malformation and belated normalcy. The effort by both Lockerbie and
Whyte to reaffirm the return to good health of both the individual and literature in Scotland assumes its proper context and significance in a vast bourgeois
realignment more globally. The critical and historical positions adopted by
Lockerbie and Whyte, and Nairn and McCrone, should not be regarded, as
they ostensibly and locally appear, as a remedial struggle against a deformed
nationalism. Rather, they gain their full meaning and belie their deepest affinities by signalling a wrangle to thread the final and telling stitch to the suture
of bourgeois hegemony.
That said, Kelman’s post-devolution fiction is notably set outwith Scotland:
the fragmentary reports of Translated Accounts seep through the confines of an
undesignated regime that is possibly Turkey or somewhere in Eastern Europe,
whilst You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free addresses the experiences
of the Scottish migrant Jeremiah Brown in the United States. In the terms
of analysis established by Nairn and McCrone in relation to Scotland and
history, and Lockerbie and Whyte with regard to Scottish literature, it is highly
tempting to concede this re-orientation of Kelman’s work as an admission
that Scottish matters have finally been resolved, that devolution constitutes
a paradigm shift from which it is time to move on. Lockerbie’s appraisal that
Kelman’s ‘writing is angrier than ever, but I think that course has run’8 seeks
to dismiss Kelman on the basis that he is out of synch with this national
resolution and the temporal and spatial closure of its narrative, yet it is also
troubled by the persistence and indeed intensification of political energies
that Lockerbie’s model of a new literature can neither explain nor periodize.
The refusal of Kelman’s work to be placed by a Scotland made normal by
these narratives of pre- and post-devolution society is highly instructive for
it signals that the politics and aesthetics of his writing are incommensurate
with both the nationalist appropriation of culture before 1999 and the postnationalist arrogation of culture thereafter. In particular, it is the stringent class
politics of Kelman’s writing which remains recalcitrant to such co-option. It
is the ideological task of nationalism to assert the primacy of the nation in
abeyance of identifications such as class, and hence to seek to annex the voice
of a writer such as Kelman as a national one rather than a precisely situated
class articulation. And the post-nationalist literature anticipated by Lockerbie
and Whyte should not be regarded as the rebuttal of the ideological work
Quoted Massie, ‘Sir Walter’s Scoterati’, Scotland on Sunday 16 June 2002. Review, 1.
8
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Aaron Kelly
undertaken by nationalism but rather its ultimate outcome: according to such
logic, the nation as an already agreed concept and the normal telos of historical
development permits the expression of the autonomy of both literature and
the individual. If nationalism betrays its bourgeois hegemony in its effort to
sublate and recode the working-class politics of a writer such as Kelman in its
own terms, then such a stratagem achieves not its negation but its apotheosis
in post-nationalism. For post-nationalism pursues the final repression of class
in its discourse of cultural difference, its normative society of differentiated
individuals. Therein, class antagonism is rewritten as cultural diversity, a
revalued sign of the post-nation’s healthy polyphony, so that, divested of its
own terms and context, the language of class becomes simply one register
amongst others of a cultural relativism that rewords bourgeois hegemony as
social pluralism.
So how might Kelman’s work facilitate a reconsideration of the democratic
credentials of the newly devolved Scotland? Well, Kelman’s work has always
been driven by the social inequalities and fracture of late capitalism, the
disruption of traditional working-class communities and solidarities and an
attendant loss of meaning from the world and its events and institutions. In
analyzing the predicament of Kelman’s characters, 1979 is a crucial watershed
since it signalled not only the contentious defeat of the first referendum on
Scottish devolution but also, compounding the Scottish working class’s lack
of democratic control over its own future, the British General Election victory
of Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher’s neo-liberal economic policies set about a
vigorous assault upon the organised labour of Britain’s industrial heartlands – a
campaign that was never endorsed by a democratic majority in Scotland (or for
that matter Wales or large areas of working-class England). Significantly, then,
state power and its institutions, which decimated the lives and communities
of working-class Scotland, were beyond the immediate understanding or
experiential grasp of its victims; it was very much absented and elsewhere
(literally hundreds of miles away). Kelman observes in Kafka’s work that ‘society
can be regarded as a labyrinth of authorities whose powers are functional’.9 So
too in his own historical moment, Kelman must confront a labyrinthine state
and bureaucracy that is rendered extremely difficult to map, comprehend or
resist due to the dialectic of the presence of its oppression and the absence of its
anonymous and unaccountable institutions. Kelman’s project in his novels and
short stories is an attempt to piece together a renewed sense of the disparate
James Kelman, And the Judges Said: Essays (London, 2002), 279.
9
259
remoteness of state power, to reconvene an oppositional social tribunal that
interrogates the state’s various apparatuses: coercive, welfare, educational and
so on. It is therefore highly apposite that Kafka should remain such an influence
of Kelman’s writing since Kafka was perhaps the first twentieth-century writer
to comprehend fully how power functions in terms of discrepancy between
the presence of the lived, daily grind of its effects and enforcements and the
absence of the locus and source of its vast systemic reach. Hence, Deleuze and
Guattari assert:
If Kafka is the greatest theorist of bureaucracy, it is because he shows
how, at a certain level (but which one? it is not localizable), the barriers
between offices cease to be ‘a definitive dividing line’ and are immersed
in a molecular medium that dissolves them and simultaneously makes
the office manager proliferate into microfigures impossible to recognize
of identify, discernable only when they are centralizable: another regime,
coexistent with the separation and totalization of the rigid segments.10
Similarly, Kelman’s work confronts the interminable and banal microfigures
and microeffects of power and yet also attempts to discern the causal structures behind these proliferations. However, with devolution, one would
expect – according to the national teleology of democratic redress – that this gap
of representation (both cultural and political) would be reduced, that power
returns to the nation and its people (and hence the historical forces which lead to
devolution coincide with the telos of national self-determination). But Kelman’s
post-devolution fiction is, if anything, inflected with even more disjuncture
and displacement than before. In answering why this might be so, it is useful to
return to the terms of Deleuze and Guattari’s work on Kafka and specifically the
theory of minor literature that they establish from Kafka’s position as a Czech
Jew writing in German. Deleuze and Guattari argue: ‘A minor literature doesn’t
come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs
within a major language . . . in it language is affected with a high coefficient
of deterritorialization’.11 In these terms, if Kelman’s work contains a devolving dynamic then it does so by deterritorializing Standard English through a
working-class Glaswegian constituency and not through a Scottish or national
Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
trans. Brian Massumi (London, 2004), 235–6.
11
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Franz Kafka: Towards A Minor Literature, trans. Dana
Polan (London, 1986), 16.
10
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Aaron Kelly
lens. By contrast, the devolution of political institutions within Britain can be
understood in terms of a fundamental reterritorialization of power: namely,
the dominance free-market economics which underpins the move to create a
European super-state portioned into highly rarefied neo-regional units.
Hence, the supposed political and national emancipation institutionally
offered by devolution may also be interpreted into terms of the microeconomic restructuring and realignments of global capitalism. Certainly
devolution is irreducible solely to the peremptory logic of global capitalism
but nor is it indissociable therefrom. So the context of Scottish devolution
requires circumspection given that the re-imbrication of British political
institutions shares its historical moment with vast forces that run counter
to popular-democratic energies: particularly, the collapse of popular belief
in the efficacy of representative or parliamentary democracy. Kelman’s postdevolution fiction confirms that in institutional terms what is ostensibly
a deterritorialization is ultimately a profound reterritorialization. That is,
not a democratizing movement towards an eventual national independence
or regionalized and micropolitical enfranchisement but rather a shift to an
increased interdependence of economic micro-units within global capitalism and
its shadowy institutions. Indeed, it is therefore highly symptomatic that in an
effort to reconcile nationalism and globalization in an official party document,
Kenny MacAskill, the Justice spokesperson of the Scottish National Party,
seeks to try and balance competing and ultimately contradictory demands
in proposing ‘Independence in an Interdependent World’.12 In MacAskill’s
terms, a reconstituted nationalism for the post-devolution SNP recognises and
endorses ‘the internationalisation of the world economy’13 and seeks to place
Scotland with welcome complicity in a coalition encapsulated by his chapter
heading: ‘Devolution, Globalisation, and a New World Order’. It is the
deterritorializing energy of social class in Kelman’s fiction that stands defiantly
outwith the global reterritorialization of a devolved Scotland. To that end,
the radical shift in Kelman’s style in Translated Accounts does not offer some
sense of a Scotland at home with itself, the homecoming of some authentic
voice as nationalist appropriations of his work would have had it, but instead
very boldly displaces his work across what the broken language of that novel
terms the ‘terrortories’14 of global space. Translated Accounts does not proffer
Kenny MacAskill, Building a Nation: Post Devolution Nationalism in Scotland (Edinburgh,
2004), 23.
13
Ibid., 27.
14
James Kelman, Translated Accounts: A Novel (London, 2001), 175.
12
261
a Scotland made normal by a democratic redress but instead forces Scottish
culture to consider its own implication in globalized networks of power and
injustice, and it casts profound doubt on the representative limits of freedom
and democracy by filtering through its fragmentary languages the constitutive
oppressions that haunt a new global dispensation.
Additionally, in You Have to be Careful Jeremiah suffers a terminal displacement: ‘I had a home, I had another home, maybe homes are ten a penny, I have
had fucking millions of them. Except in the land of my birth’.15 Interestingly
for Kelman, since he does not usually use quotation marks in his work, even
for dialogue, the word ‘hame’ is used in inverted commas in the novel on occasion. In contrast to Lockerbie and Whyte’s reconciled Scotland or Nairn and
McCrone’s Scotland made institutionally and historically normal, ‘hame’ is
for Jeremiah always displaced and his repeated attempts to define and claim it
only serve to defer it still further, for its normative global codes of belonging
are inaccessible to his class experience. Tellingly, the Scots vernacular ‘hame’
signals only its own deferral and displacement rather than its belonging and
accommodation in some reconciled national language and culture.
In addition to the spatial and linguistic displacements of Translated Accounts
and You have to be Careful that unsettle the celebration of a newly reconciled
Scotland, both novels also exhibit a profound temporal disjuncture. Translated
Accounts asks: ‘Is there a curfew for dead spirits?’.16 Both novels articulate the
persistence of historical ghosts or unfinished business, the refusal of injustices
to be reconciled in the terms of the power that has produced them in the first
place. As such, both books remain resolutely out of step with what Francis
Fukuyama terms the end of history. Fukuyama regards the present as the fulfillment of history and its reformist, ameliorative promises, and he naively
equates post-cold war global capitalism (and indeed American imperialism)
with democracy, to create, in his own terms at least, a utopia of a world supposedly beyond political division, ideological conflict or historical change.17
Echoing such sentiments in his conversation with Catherine Lockerbie, Allan
Massie proclaims that in Scotland now ‘there isn’t much interest in writing for
a cause because there isn’t much of a cause worth fighting for’.18 This effort to
periodize post-devolution Scotland in accordance with a more global doctrine
of history as culminated progress and reconciliation is forcefully lacerated by
James Kelman, You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free (London, 2004), 68.
Translated Accounts, 25.
17
See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London, 1992).
18
Alan Massie, ‘Sir Walter’s Scoterati’, Scotland on Sunday 16 June 2002. Review, 1.
15
16
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Aaron Kelly
both You have to be Careful and its journey to the heart of American imperialism and by Translated Accounts, wherein the discourse of historical progress
is exposed as a reassuring fantasy of self-determined autonomy that displaces
the acknowledgement of real horror: ‘We progress. I also would progress. A
comfort came from this. I again was aware of the bodies but as in a dream, or
dream-like, my own state’.19 Hence, Kelman’s post-devolution fiction, with ist
focus on class and the global injustices that systemically connect the world,
gives the lie to the spurious dream of a Scotland reconciled in its own state.
Dietmar Böhnke, the author of what is not only the first full-length critical
study of Kelman’s work but also a well-judged and considered one, is keen to
situate Kelman’s work in relation to devolution and to a new and specifically
national dispensation:
this recent development and what will follow from it can indeed be
regarded as an – at least indirect – outcome of the more confident mood
in Scottish culture and especially literature of the past years and decades
. . . the concern of Kelman (and other contemporary writers) with
Scottish national identity, which I found to be at the centre of his work,
certainly played a part in bringing about this new situation.20
In this kind of interpretation Kelman’s work coincides with a national and
institutional devolution that is to be understood in terms of historical ‘development’ and progress. Specifically, Böhnke equates postmodernism with
this ‘devolutionary process’21 and he invokes as a definition of the postmodern the work of Linda Hutcheon. Hutcheon formulates postmodernism as
fundamentally ex-centric: that is, a deterritorialising liberation of difference
from the constraints of power, metropole, hierarchy, totalising unity and so
on: ‘The local, the regional, the non-totalising are reasserted as the center
becomes a fiction – necessary, desired, but a fiction nonetheless’.22 In such
terms, devolving power from the centre to the margin or periphery appears
an intrinsically postmodern emancipation and enablement, thus conjoining
postmodernism and popular-democratic fulfilment. This essay, on the other
hand, has sought to affirm the resistance of Kelman’s work to the institutional
Translated Accounts, 1.
Dietmar Böhnke, Kelman Writes Back: Literary Politics in the Work of A Scottish Writer
(Berlin 1999), 6 – 7.
21
Ibid., 12.
22
Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction (London, 2000), 12.
19
20
263
devolution of power in Scotland; rather than contributing to that devolution
of power, his recent work confirms his continuing resistance to the global realignment and reterritorialization of bourgeois, liberal democracy. Perhaps the
canonical advocacy of postmodernism’s supposed emancipatory credentials is
proffered by Jean-François Lyotard through his lauding of micro-narratives
over a putatively repressive meta-narrative, and his account of the individual
as a node where social practices intersect yet cannot be mapped onto one
another or integrated into the social totality.23 In this kind of analysis, society
is heterogeneous and non-totalizable and any attempt to consider the individual in terms of problematics such as social class (or nationality or gender
for that matter) become reductive of that complexity. A. J. P. Thomson, for
example, uses Lyotard to question the attenuation of Scotland’s complexity
by a nationalist narrative: ‘This circumscription of Scotland’s political prospects is also a wrong done to politics itself, when politics is considered to
be not the implantation of pre-determined political programmes but, as it is
for Lyotard, the space of conflict and debate itself ’.24 Conversely, Kelman’s
writing demonstrates implacably that social class does reductively impede
some celebration of the heterogeneous and autonomous individual but rather it exposes how class is the very structural and constitutive ground upon
which such bourgeois identities are formed. Kelman’s work tries precisely to
reconvene a sense of the global totality producing these new micro-political
codes, hybridities, and structures. In postmodernism’s Lyotardian heterogeneity of individual and event, and in Lockerbie’s and Whyte’s post-nationalist
accounts of devolution, we find ultimately not a popular, democratic deterritorialization but instead the reterritorialization of that most mainstream of
things, the individual, the formative ideological building block of bourgeois
society.
In terms of the North of Ireland, devolution of necessity is wedded to the
Peace Process – the involvement of the British and Irish governments with
multinational investment and US interventions. As with Kelman’s work, key
moments in post-devolution Northern Irish culture also retain fundamental
suspicions and negations of the dominant assertion of the opening of the North
See Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff
Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester, 1988); The Inhuman: Reflections on Time,
trans. Geoff Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge 1991); Libidinal Economy,
trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (London, 1993).
24
A. J. P. Thomson, ‘Phrasing Scotland and the Postmodern’, in Eleanor Bell and Gavin
Miller (eds), Scotland in Theory: Reflections on Literature and Culture (Amsterdam, 2004),
69 – 81, 80.
23
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Aaron Kelly
to a new liberal-democratic global dispensation. Alan Gillis’ poem ‘Progress’25
offers a succinct but sustained meditation on the ethical aporais of the narrative of historical development and it is worth quoting in full:
They say that for years Belfast was backwards
and it’s great now to see some progress.
So I guess we can look forward to taking boxes
from the earth. I guess that ambulances
will leave the dying back amidst the rubble
to be explosively healed. Given time,
one hundred thousand particles of glass
will create impossible patterns in the air
before coalescing into the clarity
of a window. Through which, a reassembled head
will look out and admire the shy young man
taking his bomb from the building and driving home.
The poem neatly undermines the linear narrative transporting a society deemed
to be ‘backwards’ into a present dispensation of progress. By cleverly reversing
the linear narrative Gillis indicates the ethical absences of such a teleology of
history, the unresolved injustices that cannot be undone by moving backwards
and forwards along its temporal continuum. The understated and resigned
refrain, ‘I guess’, signals simultaneously the dominance of this doctrine of
progress and a deep circumspection as to its merits. The ironised ‘we can look
forward’ divests the phrase of its easy complicity with the readymade futurity
offered by the state-sponsored aspects of the Peace Process. The poem loads the
phrase with irony by overdetermining its seemingly everyday, common sensibly true anticipation in the terms of that overarching march of progress. This
looking forward is exposed as an act of fundamental forgetting, an effort to
repress the restive adikia that troubles and haunts the linear narrative of development. And that teleology of progress anticipates its healing will be fulfilled
‘given time’, where time is a given, where this temporal narrative enthrones its
own inevitability.26 Where this narrative of progress offers ‘clarity’ it does so
Alan Gillis, Somebody, Somewhere (Oldcastle, Co. Meath, 2004), 55.
In Specters of Marx, a book which takes as it epigraph Hamlet’s complaint that ‘The time
is out of joint’, Derrida reworks Martin Heidegger’s concept of adikia to suggest that
we inhabit a disjuncture in history that is not only temporal but also ethical and to stress
the need to reconvene a historical tribunal that comprehends our phantasmagoric
present and its injustices, to ‘set things right’, as Hamlet would have it. There is a
25
26
265
only by remaking and ‘reassembling’ events in its own terms and voiding them
of their own ethical and historical import and context. But whilst the poem
ends with ‘home’ it is evident that the linear model of history as progress cannot finally reconcile nor resolve the historical events that it seeks to order in
an ultimately ‘impossible’ manner. The poem’s deep irony insists that another
means of doing justice to the past is painfully necessary since otherwise ethical
displacement and injustice must inexorably continue their revenant or return
seeping through the aporia of the movement of progress even as that dominant
narrative of history wishes to trammel or repress them.
The fact that the poem proceeds from what ‘they say’ not only permits
the poetic voice to dissociate itself from the doctrine of progress and pursue its task of brushing that history against the grain with biting irony, as
it also indicates that the dominant management of the Peace Process and
its supposed democratic redress is conducted by ‘they’ whilst the victims are
disallowed by such a narrative from being subjects of the historical events in
which they are involved. In terms of this arrogation of events by the narrative of history as progress, Derrida’s account of the archive is illuminating.
Drawing upon the etymology of the word ‘archive’ in the Greek arkhē,
Derrida formulates the archive as at once commencement and commandment,
as entailing the principles of history, of where things commence, and of commandment and law. In the second, determining sense of the arkhē, Derrida
argues that the law can be found in the archive: ‘there where men and gods
command, there where authority, social order are exercised, in this place from
which order is given’.27 Most particularly, Derrida asserts that it is the archons
who have the primary power to interpret the archive: ‘it is at their home, in
that place which is their house [arkheion as ‘house,’ ‘domicile,’ ‘address’] . . .
that official documents are filed’.28 In Gillis’ poem ‘Progress’ it is therefore
telling that the ‘home’ arrived at is produced by ‘they’, by the archons and
guarantors of a narrative of history as progress that records and re-orders the
ethical dilemmas of events in the history of the North which denies those
events and their participants their own context and specificity. Derrida neatly
avers: ‘Effective democratization can always be measured by this essential criterion: the participation in and access to the archive, its constitution, and its
profound fear in the end of history narrative of the ghostly return, what Derrida
terms the revenant, an insecurity that history is not dead and buried and cannot simply
be co-opted to secure the encirclement of the present state of affairs..
27
Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago,
1995), 9.
28
Ibid., 10.
266
Aaron Kelly
interpretation’.29 Gillis’ ‘Progress’ similarly gauges and indicts the democratic
credentials of a devolved Northern Ireland by uncovering the state-sponsored
aspects of the Peace Process and its model of progressive history as serving the
interests of the archons, the keepers of this history of the powerful that would
re-member, re-order and forget the voices of the vanquished.
Comparable issues of the claims of ethics and archives are distilled in Robert
McLiam Wilson’s ‘The Dreamed’, a magic realist tale in which an old man
becomes accustomed to the dead combatants, initially from the Second World
War and then from all wars, returning to life through the portal of his bed at
night. The old man had escaped fighting in the Second World War through
his working as a researcher in the War Office Research Unit. Embedded in the
bureaucracy of war, he became inured to the mechanized, economic costing of
war and death:
He had grown used to casualty figures and projections of all kinds.
He had seen economic breakdowns of casualty figures. How much
British casualties cost the economy, how much it cost on average to
kill Germans. He was perturbed in only a minor way . . . He had a
great gift for not thinking. He distrusted empathy, he distrusted the
way his eyes could fill with reasonless tears. Why weep over suffering
that didn’t belong to him? What was the possible use of such a habit?
. . . When the Americans dropped two of their spectacular new ideas
on Japan he felt the blast a little more . . . When he started to read
government documents about the Jews, he found it harder to avoid
reflection. When accounts appeared in newspapers, his head itched
again. When he saw photographs, his mouth dried for what felt like
forever.30
The story in a very meaningful way does serve to pass sentence on that bureaucratization of war and society as its ghosts return to trouble the promise of
history’s progress, a spectral return of the departed and their unpaid ethical
debt. However, as the war dead miraculously return to life and seek a setting
things right, an ethical realignment, there is also a more troubling structure
to Wilson’s story. The first returnee from the dead, a French soldier named
Sylvain, takes it upon himself with the old man’s assistance to see to it that all
Ibid., 4.
Robert McLiam Wilson, ‘The Dreamed’, in Ian Jack (ed.), Granta 81 (Spring 2003).
303 – 22, 308.
29
30
267
of the soldiers who return to life are provided for and reintegrated into society.
And whilst the story on one level allows for a utopian return and redress for
history’s victims, there is an unavoidable and iterative parallel between the economics and bureaucratization of war and death felt by the old man in his job
in the War Office and Sylvain’s ordering of the redrafted lives of the returned
war dead:
As the years passed the bureaucracy of the departed had become magnified, monstrous. Much of it was in the form of open, charitable trust.
Fundraising mostly took place within the group of departed but several
investment companies were set up and increased the proceeds judiciously. Businesses run by the departed burgeoned. No man leaving the
old man’s house needed to look for work . . . By 1952, almost all the
returnees were paying a semi-formal tariff on their income to one of
Sylvain’s organizations. By 2001, the old man made a guess that the
simple income of the returnees must amount to a minimum of 192
million pounds. That did not count the investment accounts and various businesses.31
‘The Dreamed’ harbors a tension between the desire to reclaim lost lives, to
set right injustice, and the ordering of the archive, the return of the men to
a world that has not been systemically transformed and which, in the above
passage quoted, co-opts all things to its economic and historical progress,
including justice, so that it is profits which are accrued ‘judiciously’. Sylvain’s
archive and its bureaucratic order confirms Derrida’s point that ‘archivization
produces as much as it records the event’.32 The return of the dead, in Sylvain’s
system, recodes injustice and reorders the departed lives in the ongoing, selfperpetuating history that had sent them to war and killed them in the first
instance. Hence, the story says of the Old Man:
One thing he particularly abhorred was Sylvain’s habit of documentation. Sylvain had kept scrupulous archives . . . he knew all the
numbers, all the fractions. He knew the exact total of returned men. He
knew the monthly rate of returnees, their nationality predominances
and sequences, costs per man.33
Ibid., 316.
Derrida, Archive Fever, 17.
33
Wilson, ‘The Dreamed’, 317.
31
32
268
Aaron Kelly
That the story’s more utopian, ethical urges are attenuated by the order of history may be viewed as pessimistic; yet it may also be redeemed in the light of
Fredric Jameson’s sense of the diagnostic and critical-substantive role of what
he deems as the negative modality necessary to properly utopian thought: ‘the
system would have to be already transformed’.34 This negative sense of utopia,
Jameson maintains, is strongly political so that ‘it is most authentic when we
cannot imagine it. Its function lies not in helping us to imagine a better future
but rather in demonstrating our utter incapacity to imagine such a future – our
imprisonment in a non-utopian present without historicity or futurity – so as
to reveal the ideological closure of the system in which we are somehow trapped
or confined’.35 In this light, the utopian urge for redress in ‘The Dreamed’ is
disappointed by, yet also therefore utterly indicts, the ideological closure of
developmental history, the selfsame iteration of its paradigm. And the story is,
in some way, able to flow through the aporias and repression of that history.
We are informed of the old man:
He still wondered how these documents read. What kind of literature
did they represent? What kind of testament? He knew that the vastness
of the bureaucracy was Sylvain’s attempt to dilute the occult strangeness
of the whole phenomenon. He knew that the Frenchman had always
hoped that double-entry book keeping would render everything more
thinkable . . . The only statistic that the old man could quote verbatim
from this strange archive was that nearly two hundred of the men had
ended up long or short term in psychiatric institutions for trying to tell
the truth.36
So the departed are allowed jobs, careers, social advancement, profits, economic success – anything, in fact, but their ‘truth’. They have been archived in
both past and present in terms of a historical order that will allow anything
but an acknowledgement of their experiences and the ethical questions which
they raise in their own terms and context. Yet their truth, what the story itself
recognizes as their ‘trace’, remains and rightly and insistently voices a restive
disquiet with the dominant order and its requisition of their lives.
If Wilson’s ‘The Dreamed’ castigates the archons, the keepers of history’s
dominant order of things, and demonstrates that nothing has changed ethically
Fredric Jameson, ‘The Politics of Utopia’, New Left Review 25 (Jan – Feb 2004), 46.
Ibid, 38.
36
Wilson, ‘The Dreamed’, 318.
34
35
269
in the systemic closure of that order despite the return of the dead, then Eoin
McNamee’s The Ultras is a post-devolution novel that sharply focuses such critique directly on the state itself. As with much of McNamee’s work, the novel
weaves its fictions in and out of real events, in this case the life and death of
Robert Nairac, an SAS soldier killed on active service in Northern Ireland.
The police officer, Agnew, who retrospectively investigates the activities of the
secret services and their involvement in murder in the North during the conflict
uncovers a shadowy intelligence group whose very existence is denied: ‘The
forsworn brethren, the Ultras. Ultra meaning beyond. Ultra meaning extreme.
The word had a cabbalistic tone to it . . . They created secrets and forced everyone else to live in them’.37 Indeed, according to the OED, ultra connotes both
‘lying spatially beyond or on the other side of ’, and ‘going beyond, surpassing,
or transcending the limits of ’. As with the ‘they’ in Gillis’ poem ‘Progress’,
The Ultras implies that, in spite of its efforts to map the injustices and morally
unfinished business of the past, the official archive, its archons and its law override ethical remembrance. McNamee’s penumbral, conspiratorial milieu and
its ‘ghostly infrastructure’38 returns us also to Kelman’s fiction and the sense that
power is fundamentally non-representative in the new North. As with Kelman’s
Kafkaesque mappings, so too McNamee must seek to straddle a ‘moral void’
in history and the new dispensation yet retain a commitment that ‘everything
was connected’, that a historical tribunal must be established capable of passing judgment on inequality and ethical aporia.39 The ethical, utopian yearning
in the work of Gillis, Wilson, McNamee and Kelman undermines the dominant account of devolution as the culmination of a history of progress, and the
unrealized nature of that ethical desire further serves to condemn the systemic
history which makes such an ethical redress impossible. As such, this writing
offers a stringent confrontation with post-devolution power in all its forms,
even as those forms seek simultaneously to overwhelm us and to withdraw from
our grasp and understanding completely. Such work deterritorializes itself from
the complacent modification of a post-devolution, liberal-democratic Scotland,
and from a Northern Ireland progressed beyond history, and it both anticipates
and demands a more fundamental and revolutionary transformation. As You
Have to be Careful insists: ‘There are times when the world changes’.40
Eoin McNamee, The Ultras (London, 2004), 216.
38
Ibid, 10
39
Ibid, 150; 10.
40 Kelman, You Have to be Careful, 90.
37
University of Edinburgh
The Revival Of The Ulster-Scots Cultural Identity
At The Beginning Of The Twenty-First Century
Linda M. Hagan
The Scotch and Irish friendly are,
Their wishes are the same,
. . . Our historians and our poets
They always did maintain
That the origin of the Scottishmen
And Irish are the same . . .
(From ‘The Social Thistle and Shamrock’ partly attributed to
Henry Joy McCracken)
These sentiments from ‘The Social Thistle and Shamrock’, partly attributed to
Henry Joy McCracken, a leader of the United Irishmen, a Presbyterian and an
Ulster-Scot, reflect the close links which have existed between Ireland – especially
the north-eastern part of the island – and Scotland. It is perhaps at least partially because of these links it is still possible to differentiate on a cultural basis
between the inhabitants of its northern and southern parts. The province of
Ulster has always been unique and distinct. ‘. . . there has been an otherness
to the region and its people that has mystified strangers and created difficulties
. . . with its neighbours’.1
One aspect of this ‘otherness’ is the influence of the Ulster-Scots, who at
the beginning of the twenty-first century have an increasing awareness of their
own language and cultural traditions. A sense of cultural identity is becoming
increasingly important in a world of globalisation, since ‘it provides a sense of
belonging. It is a root in a rootless age . . .’2 Increasing interest in all things
Ulster-Scots could be seen as part of a much wider global search for meaning and identity rather than simply as a political reaction to demands for the
revival of a specifically Irish culture.
The popular ‘understanding’ of who the Ulster-Scots are and when and
where they originated tends to focus almost solely on the Plantation period.
However, ‘Ulster was always close to Scotland both physically and culturally
John Killen, The unkindest cut: a cartoon history of Ulster 1900 – 2000 (Belfast, 2000), 1.
A. Alcock, ‘Ulster-British Identity and Ulster’, in W. F. Marshall Summer School, 2001
(Coleraine, 2001).
1
2
272
Linda M. Hagan
and this was merely reinforced during the plantation in the seventeenth
century’.3 The people of Ulster have always tended to look eastward to their
Scottish neighbours more readily than southward. From ‘Mesolithic settler and
missionary saint to migrant seasonal worker and twentieth-century medical
student – the narrow waters of the North Channel have witnessed and carried
a constant traffic of people and ideas between the two coasts’.4
Until a few years ago, mention of the term ‘Ulster-Scots’ outside of academic
circles would probably have received the response, ‘What cultural tradition or
language?’ Professor Michael Montgomery of the University of South Carolina
asserts that ‘ for a long time . . . information on Ulster-Scots could be found
only in a few scholarly tomes and academic journals, and these were usually
published abroad’.5 Since the Belfast Agreement of 1998, however, the term
‘Ulster-Scots’ has been heard more frequently. In this document all parties
acknowledged the ‘importance of respect, understanding and tolerance in
relation to linguistic diversity . . . the Irish language, Ulster-Scots and the languages of the various ethnic communities, all of which are part of the cultural
wealth of the island of Ireland.’6 It established a North South Language Body
to promote both the Irish language and the Ulster-Scots language and culture.
In recent years there have been significant moves made to overcome the dearth
of knowledge about this cultural tradition and to promote an interest in the
spoken language. The founding of the Ulster-Scots Language Society in 1992,
the Ulster-Scots Heritage Council in 1995 and the Ulster-Scots Agency in
1999 have played significant and important roles in promoting interest and
informed opinion about Ulster-Scots language and culture. But, in spite of
official acknowledgment, popular and media references have often continued
to ridicule the very notion of such a language or cultural identity; to poke fun
at the people who would claim this culture or to level accusations of solely
political motivation at its proponents.
There has been much debate over the status of Ulster-Scots and controversy persists as to whether it is a language or a dialect of Scots. However, in
J. Dingley, ‘Unionist Contra Nationalist Identity’, in W. F. Marshall Summer School, 2001
(Coleraine, 2001).
4
J. Erskine, and G. Lucy (eds), Cultural Traditions in Northern Ireland Varieties of Scottishness
(Belfast, 1997), 1.
5
M. Montgomery and A. Smyth (eds), A Blad O Ulster-Scotch Frae Ullans (Belfast, 2001),
15.
6
Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and
the Government of Ireland, Agreement Reached in the Multi-party Negotiations (Belfast
1998).
3
The Revival of the Ulster Scots Cultural Identity
273
the matter of the revival of an Ulster-Scots culture and the facilitation of a
discrete sense of identity, such linguistic debate is somewhat irrelevant. The
fact is that Ulster-Scots has been awarded status as a minority language under
Part 2 of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and this
is an important but not crucial component in the encouragement of interest
in Ulster-Scots culture and the revival of an Ulster-Scots cultural identity. It
is, however, interesting to note that Gerry Adams argued from a nationalist
perspective that ‘the restoration of our culture must be a crucial part of our
political struggle and that the restoration of the Irish language must be a central part of the cultural struggle’.7 It is hardly surprising therefore that attempts
to promote the Ulster-Scots tongue have been met with the criticism that it is
a politically-motivated movement to counter the Irish language revival.
This paper is not concerned with the language issue, however, but with the
increasing sense of identification with Ulster-Scots culture – a phenomenon
which encompasses more people than those who would claim to speak UlsterScots. It examines their perceived communal or ethnic characteristics and
explores how the Ulster-Scots present themselves through looking at some
humorous writing in both Ulster-Scots and English. It also examines how
others outside the Ulster-Scots community have used humour about the
people, the culture and the language as a weapon against them.
When we think of humorous writing we automatically think of something
designed to entertain. Humour, however, can equally well be used to criticise
and ridicule or provide an opportunity for political comment. Whenever we
consider the great writers of Irish or Anglo-Irish literature such as Sean O’Casey
or Oscar Wilde we do not only think of their stunning comic creations but also
of the vivid picture of a society they portrayed or the jibe beneath the veneer of
humour which lambasted the accepted norms of behaviour in that society.
Those who form the butt of humour – depending on their self-esteem – may
either feel threatened or be able to join in the laughter. The language of a play
such as The Plough and the Stars is an important element in creating the comedy but the language is being used to develop the comic situation or character,
not as a means of poking fun at the language per se. Herbison, however, has
described the Ulster-Scots language and literary tradition in the latter years of
the twentieth century as ‘downgraded to a pseudo-literary or sub-literary dialect, the object of satire and ridicule’.8 In an audit and needs analysis prepared
Gerry Adams, Free Ireland: towards a lasting peace (Dingle, 1986), 147.
I. Herbison, Language, Literature and Cultural Identity: An Ulster-Scots Perspective (Ballymena,
1989), 7.
7
8
274
Linda M. Hagan
for the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (2004), 22% of the Ulster-Scots
groups questioned cited marginalisation and the questioning of the legitimacy
of Ulster-Scots culture resulting in low self-esteem as a major issue for them
and it is easy to understand why this should be so. Popular perception has
remained that Ulster-Scots is merely a dialect, or even in extreme cases has
been dismissed as merely a funny accent, and few would even be aware of
its fine literary heritage dating back beyond Robert Burns’ influence on the
Weaver poets to Francis Boyle from County Down and The Ulster Miscellany
published in Belfast in 1753, the latter including nine ‘Scotch Poems’ written
in the Laggan area of east Donegal.
The media has played its part in the denigration of Ulster-Scots cultural identity. A swot analysis compiled to inform future planning in the Arts
defined ‘the perceived open hostility to Ulster-Scots including from the media’
as a major threat to progress.9 A couple of newspaper articles will exemplify
this hostility. The Sunday Herald of 16 May 1999, under the punning headline ‘Europe says it’s good to talk with Irish ayes’, reported the decision of the
then Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, to protect the Ulster-Scots language. ‘Or
rather a deceesion o tha Narlin Airlann secretar o stat cud weel scug tha oulrife
Ulster-Scotch leid an gie it a heft in Euraip’. It then went on to refer patronisingly to the ‘eccentric voice of the Glens of Antrim’, perpetuating the myth of
an isolated and somewhat ludicrous or archaic group of people. Similarly, in his
weekly column in the Irish News, Tom Kelly, as recently as 29 October 2002,
described Ulster-Scots as gibberish. He wrote: ‘I’ve always had the impression
that Ulster-Scots was the remnant of the dialect of my grandparents generation held together today by those reminiscing over a few pints. A sort of John
Pepper’s guide to Ulsterisms’.
However, growing popular interest in the language and the culture, the
promotional work of the Ulster-Scots Agency and academic research have all
helped to create a more measured response to any debate about the language.
In an Irish News editorial of 15 November 2002, the writer acknowledged
that in the past the language’s detractors had ridiculed Ulster-Scots as ‘a diy
language for Orangemen’, but concluded that ‘The hostility experienced by
the Ulster-Scots linguistic and cultural community and the ongoing disparagement of the Ulster-Scots language are clearly breaches of both the letter and
the spirit of the Belfast Agreement’. There is a need to redress a situation where
native Ulster-Scots speakers have been encouraged, if not actually forced, to
Arts Council of Northern Ireland, The Arts of Irish and Ulster Scots (Belfast, 2004), 11.
9
275
give up their own way of speaking in favour of some perceived more acceptable or standardised Ulster English. One such experience is vividly described
in ‘Thae Tuk mae Ain Tung’ by Charlie Reynolds:
Hooinver whun wae moved tae tha toon things changed for iver. A wus
lached at deh an nicht aboot tha wye A ta’ked. Tha maist o tha wains
at tha schuil thocht A wus a kinna o an oddity frae tha garry boag, naw
that thae micht hae kent whaur tha boag wus onywye.
Things went frae bad tae worse an owre tha years wae tha tants o mae
plae-mates an tha goulin’ o ha aul’ teachers, thae tried tae tak mae ain
tung aff mae. Even mae ain yins wha still tak tha aul tung thocht it wus
better that their aff-spring got redd o it in tha name o progress.10
Reynolds’ experience is in no way unique. Scots speakers will be only too
familiar with it. The speaking of Ulster-Scots and the validity of this cultural
tradition is beginning to build up momentum but it takes time to restore selfesteem and pride in one’s own heritage.
When discussing the print media we should also consider political cartoons. On 7 February 2003 a cartoon featuring Lord Laird of Artigarvin, at
that time Head of the Ulster-Scots Agency, appeared in The Irish News. Lord
Laird was pictured at ‘Cairnryan Immigration’ with a disparate group of farming folk pictured huddled behind him. The caption read:
Customs man: I canny onderstand these yins.
Lord Laird: They’re trying to tell you that they’re seeking asylum to
escape persecution for speaking their native Ulster-Scots.
Customs Man: Seeking asylum! I thought they’d escaped from one.
This might well be dismissed as a bit of fun but it might be difficult to see
the funny side when it can seem to Ulster-Scots proponents that this is one
attack among many. In this cartoon the implication certainly seems to be that
those involved in the Ulster-Scots revival are crazy. Much more controversial
was the cartoon of May 2004 after the premiere of the Ulster-Scots musical
‘On Eagle’s Wing’. The cartoon featured Hitleresque dancers in the chorus
line of the show and seemed thereby to be making an association between
Ulster-Scots cultural identity and the Nazis or Fascism. The show’s cast, if
M. Montgomery, and A. Smyth, (eds), A Blad O Ulster-Scotch frae Ullans (Belfast, 2003),
229.
10
276
Linda M. Hagan
not by implication the audience, seemed to be equated with the public rallies
of Hitler’s Germany. The editor of The Irish News, defending the cartoon on
the BBC Radio Ulster Talkback programme, pointed out the reference to The
Producers, a Mel Brooks’ film which would have been lost on the vast majority
of readers. In such circumstances it is perhaps hardly surprising that the UlsterScots are defensive and feel under attack.
Of course there is nothing new in poking fun at the Ulster-Scots and their
language. Robinson has traced the tradition back to that greatest of satirists,
Jonathan Swift.11 ‘The North Country-Man’s Description of Christ’s-Church,
Dublin In A Letter to a Friend’ of 1731, which was purportedly written
from Portaferry in County Down by an Ulster sailor who had been laid over
in Dublin on a Sunday and wanted to attend a Presbyterian church but by
mistake ended up in the Anglican cathedral, was originally published along
with four other pieces all caricaturing dissenters.12 We can clearly recognise
Swift’s comic presentation of the narrow-minded and ill-educated Ulsterman
and the ridicule the author wished to pour upon him as being typical of the
Ulster-Scot. This tradition of mocking the Ulster-Scots speaker continues in
its most modern incarnation on the internet. The Ballygobackwards website
features spoof ‘news’ articles poking fun at a wide range of people and events
in Northern Ireland. The July 2002 edition of ‘Northern Ireland’s alternative
look on life’ featured a piece entitled ‘The Ulster Scots Corner/ Da Carnear fir
Ullah Scot’: ‘One of the features of this online magazine is a unique column
where you can learn, yes learn, ten new Ulster Scots sentences each edition!
Think of it, you can now travel to Glenarm and converse in comfort with the
locals’. The article then goes on to offer ten phrases which are ‘translated’ as
being exactly the same in both English and Ulster-Scots, the implication being
that there is no such language.
The September 2002 edition of Ballygobackwards featured an article
entitled ‘Good News for Latin Lovers’ which took another swipe at UlsterScots. The report was of a decision of Queens University to translate Horace’s
Odes from Latin into Ulster-Scots. Names given to characters in the report
included Professor Bill McTattie, John O’Scetpic and Billy McSack o’ Spuds.
The report stated that ‘There’s a huge demand for classics in Newtownards and
night classes in Greek and Latin are oversubscribed’. Billy McSack o’ Spuds
P. Robinson, ‘Jonathan Swift: His Early Writings in Ulster-Scots?’, Ullans, Nummer 3,
Spring 1995.
12
P. Fitzgerald and M. Montgomery, ‘An Early Letter in Ulster-Scots’, Ullans, Nummer
2 (Spring 1994).
11
277
was quoted as saying, ‘We’re more into Greek in this area, we were really
hoping that they would translate Homer’s Illiad fair ye. This is typical of the
Council, they’ve always favoured the Romans and what the hell have they
ever done for us?’
Today Ulster-Scots are portrayed as serious – even humourless – hardworking, verging on the puritanical and of course Protestant – a caricature
which completely overlooks the significant number of Catholic Ulster-Scots
speakers in the Glens of Antrim and especially in East Donegal. But is the
‘dourness’ ascribed to the Ulster-Scots a defence mechanism to protect against
the criticism and attack under which they have lived? Paton posited, in relation
to the Ulster actor Stephen Rea, that ‘. . . one can see a good reason for the
self-protective dourness that he sometimes wraps around him like a cloak.’13
Have the Ulster-Scots used dourness to protect themselves? Or is there, rather,
a myth of ‘soda farl chauvinism’ which has been perpetuated by Ulster-Scots
writers and humourists themselves?14 For instance, a photograph of Harry West,
one-time leader of the Unionist Party, offers an image which may seem simply
to reinforce all the characteristics which critics have employed to describe the
‘typical Ulster-Scot’. He looks a forbidding and dour character indeed. We
find, on reading the caption15 however, that West had deliberately posed in this
way to fulfil the stereotype for the photographer and had burst out laughing
afterwards, appreciating the joke. Does such humour pander to the tendency
‘to elevate folksiness into an art form – a kind of macho parochialism or inverted
snobbery’16 – and has such an outlook allowed the Ulster-Scots language and
culture, albeit unwittingly, to be marginalized and to be prevented from taking
its rightful place in contemporary society? Has the content and style meant that
both the language and the culture could be sidelined as outdated, restricting
Ulster-Scots to a predominantly older rural audience that is fast disappearing?
The finest writing in the Ulster-Scots Literary tradition is acknowledged to
be that of the Rhyming Weavers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While much of their work was serious in tone reflecting the economic and
political upheavals of their time they could take a humorous look at contemporary society too. Porter’s self-teasing ‘On seeing His Name In Robinson’s Book
of Poems, with ‘Esq.’ Added to it’ illustrates the ability to laugh at oneself.
M. Paton, ‘Stephen Rea . . . the actor, not the star’, Belfast Telegraph, April 16, 2004.
I. Knox, Culture Vultures – Political Cartoons 1990 – 1999 (Belfast, 1999), 79.
15
The photograph featured in Brian Turner (ed.), Merely Players – Portraits from Northern
Ireland by Bobbie Hanvey (Newtownards, 1999). The caption reads ‘Give me a real dour
Protestant look, Harry. And he did. I said , ‘Practice makes perfect’. And he roared laughing’.
16
Knox, Culture Vultures – Political Cartoons 1990 – 1999, 79.
13
14
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Linda M. Hagan
Poems such as Orr’s light-hearted ‘Address to Beer’ where he describes himself
as ‘The Bardie whom thou fill’d yestreen’, along with Porter’s humorous epigrams and epitaphs all offered light-hearted amusement for their subscribers.
Such light and amusing topics are balanced by serious poems addressing issues
of social and political concern. It could be argued that it is this interspersing of
the comic and the tragic and their concern to address contemporary life and
problems that is at least part of their greatness.
Among the extensive writings of W. F. Marshall, ‘The Bard of Tyrone’ in the
early twentieth century, is an unpublished three-act country kitchen comedy
entitled The Corduroy Bag. His writing was rediscovered by a modern audience
in 1983 when Blackstaff Press published a collection of his poems Livin’ in
Drumlister. Marshall’s poetry has elements of Ulster-Scots but also of Ulster
English. In his comic poetry did he offer a realistic picture or a nostalgic look
at a culture already disappearing? Is Marshall’s work, as Herbison suggests,
‘regressive’, because in it, ‘acute social comment [is] replaced by comic caricature, sympathy by ironic distance’.17 His best-known poem ‘Me An’ Me Da’ is
a humorous tale of the speaker’s two romances with ‘Wee Margit’ and Brigit
who ‘tuk the pock disayse’ and pokes fun at the farmer whose procrastination led him to miss his chance with Margit only for him to be, in his turn,
rejected by Brigid. ‘John the Liar’ similarly turns the tables on the narrator.
The colloquial conversation used in the poem has the ring of authenticity and
shows Marshall’s genuine affection for these country folk among whom he was
brought up.
Sez he,
‘Be gomentays, I went an’ killed two pigs,
Ye niver seen the like of them two pigs,
Throth they wor tarra: jist the five months oul’.’
‘The deil a hair I care,’ sez I, ‘ye killed
A score of pigs; stan’ out the road!’
The business acumen, or lack of it, of McFadden in ‘Bad Luck’ demonstrates
again one of the recurring themes for Ulster-Scots humour – the wheelin’an’
dealin’ of the countryside where to strike a hard bargain is the sign of success,
while ‘Sarah Ann’ picks up another theme – rural courtin’. The narrator’s
practical bargaining for the girl he wants – ‘ . . . a neighbour man an’ tuk him
I. Herbison, ‘The Rest is Silence’: Some Remarks on the Disappearance of Ulster Scots
Poetry’, in J. Erskine, and G. Lucy (eds), Cultural Traditions in Northern Ireland: Varieties
of Scottishness (Belfast, 1997), 138.
17
279
down to spake for me’ – reminds us of bygone days and practices. The sequel
poem, ‘The Runaway’, finds the narrator’s plight even more difficult when the
ensuing wedding party descends into an all-out knockabout brawl which has
more of the comic stage Irishman about it than the traditional dour UlsterScot. The pragmatist, however, is always the success: his choice of Liza Jane
and belief that he really is better off with the one who ‘diz what she’s bid’ bring
us back to a familiar version of the Ulster-Scot.
John Wier, author of ‘Bab McKeen on Things in General’, a regular feature
in the Ballymena Observer for over thirty years up until 1910, used his column to reflect on contemporary events. He was part of a new style of writing
where fictional characters in local newspapers were the vox populi for their
area, expressing local concerns and interests. A simple comic story such as
‘An Expensive Vote’, pokes fun at local parliamentary candidates as well as
acknowledging the business acumen of the locals.
A wheen years ago a Scotch candidate wus luckin’ for a sate in Parlymint,
an’ ca’d at a hoose whur an auld couple lieved. Finnin’ the auld wife on
her lane, he begun tae crack wi’ her, an’ axed hir tae try an’ get the auld
man’s vote, an’ while they wur crackin’, he spies a kitlin’ haein’ fun wi’ a
bit o’ string on the flure, an’ offered £5 for it, an’ the auld woman closed
the bargin immediately, an’ on leein’, the man said he hoped she wad
secure the vote for him. ‘Weel,’ quo she, ‘as I said afore, John’s a man o’
his ain min’, an’ juist daes what strecks in his ain noodle; but at ony rate,
sir, ye hae got a real chape kittlin’, for yer opponent who was in nae farer
nor yesterday, an he gaed me £10 for its brother.18
Wier’s keen wit and wry observations on local and world news offered a unique
Ulster-Scots voice. His writing, although invariably light-hearted in tone, often
dealt with quite serious topics. Robinson in his foreword to Bab M’Keen, The
Wit and Wisdom of an Ulster Scot states that this writing ‘tended to be more
realistic and less romantic than . . . kail-yard books’,19 thereby offering a less
nostalgic presentation of the Ulster-Scots than Marshall.
The ulster-scotsrhymes internet site states that it ‘haes bain gathered tae
gither bae tha Poocher tae pit forrit Rhymes, Yarns an’ Sangs in tha aul UlsterScots tongue’. The collection includes the work of both contemporary writers
Jack Adams (ed.), Bab McKeen, The Wit and Wisdom of an Ulster Scot (Ballymena, 2002),
23.
19
Ibid, 1.
18
280
Linda M. Hagan
and poems collected from newspapers and passed down through the oral tradition. The contents include ‘Poor Wee Aggie’, ‘How Pat soul’ the pig’, ‘Coortin’
in the Plantin’ and ‘Lukin Bak’ – poems which appeal mainly to an older generation and once again deal with country matters and customs. Interestingly
however it also includes some older poems such as ‘Smokin Weans’ by Bab
McKeen where he laments:
When I was young it ustae be
That naew yin smoked till thirty-three
Or thereabouts, but noo the weans
Maun puff awa’ their bits o’ brains,
An’ think it manly exercise
Their Maker’s work tae Darwinise
Among the contemporary poet/humourists featured on the site is Charlie
Gillen, The Wizard, a well-known County Antrim storyteller. His performances of poems such as ‘Wavin’ Guidbye’ – the tale of his receding hairline:
At this sure I riz in a panic
Tae tell ye the truth I feel’t strange
Oor Tracey seys sit doon tae I finish
For ye luk lake a doag wae the mange
entertain packed halls up and down the country. He writes about his own
experiences growing up in County Antrim with poems such as ‘Tha Pratas,
Ach! I miss them’, and ‘Scartin’ Midges’. His verses are about rural life but a
life which The Poocher concedes is : ‘. . . aboot tha moss an tha cutting o’ tha
peats, something that naw ower mony ken any thing aboot noo a dehs’.
There is of course a place for remembrance and reflection but Herbison
was correct to identify Ulster-Scots cultural identity as having been based on
a sense of belonging to stable rural communities – and the fact is that these
are fast disappearing. The Ulster-Scots language and culture will only be able
to flourish if its literary tradition, including its humorous writing, can find
relevance to life in the twenty-first century. To gain parity of esteem and status
in an increasingly culturally-diverse and culturally-enriched society, the UlsterScots need contemporary writers who can build on their eighteenth-century
‘golden age’; writers able to recover their radical Scots literary past who will
use humour not just to entertain an aging audience but to make relevant social
281
comment, and to reflect the concerns of their own and the wider community.
Whatever the political and legal developments that have given Ulster-Scots an
enhanced position in contemporary Northern Ireland, to hark back constantly
to a way of life long gone, or to find identity solely in events and experiences
from the past, will not prevent a culture from becoming merely a historical
relic.
Stranmillis University College
Cairns Craig
In this essay I want to try to step across several geographic and disciplinary
boundaries: first, to explore the ways in which contemporary philosophy
and literary theory in Ireland (in the work of Declan Kiberd and Richard
Kearney) has been engaged by conceptions of ‘self ’ and ‘other’ which derive
from ‘continental’ philosophy and from Freudian psychology; second, to
explore how, retrospectively, such arguments have been used to justify a
radical opposition between science and art (using W. B. Yeats as an exemplary
instance), as well as, at a philosophical level, between knowledge and action;
and third, to use these interconnections as an example of the potential value of
Irish-Scottish studies, by looking at the ways in which the resources of Scottish
philosophy and psychology might offer an alternative – and possibly more
productive – conception of ‘the other’ than those deriving from the ‘continental’
tradition. In doing so I hope to exemplify how Irish-Scottish studies can help
reconfigure our understanding of our cultural pasts, of the ways in which we
comprehend our contemporary cultural dilemmas, and of how they might
open up alternative possibilities from which we can develop our future cultural
and research agendas.1
I
In Strangers, Gods and Monsters (2003),2 Richard Kearney set out on an
ambitious exploration and critique of the role of the ‘Other’ in Western
thought, and especially as it has developed in modern ‘continental’ theory.
Though it is not crucial to the overall scope of his argument, the opposition of
England and Ireland offers a defining instance of ‘othering’:
This essay derives from the opening plenary lecture of the 2006 AHRC ‘Crosscurrents
Conference’ for graduate students in Irish and Scottish studies, held in Queen’s
University, Belfast. My thanks to the organisers for challenging me to produce a
justification of ‘Irish-Scottish Studies’.
2
Richard Kearney, Strangers, Gods and Monsters: Interpreting Otherness (London, 2003),
hereafter cited in the text SGM.
1
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Cairns Craig
Most Western discourses of identity . . . are predicated upon some
unconscious projection of an Other who is not ‘us’. At the collective
level of politics, this assumes the guise of an elect ‘nation’ or ‘people’
defining itself over against an alien adversary. Witness the old enmities
between Greek and Barbarian, Gentile and Jew, Crusader and Infidel,
Aryan and non-Aryan. Even modern ‘civilized’ nations have not always
been immune to such stigmatizing practices. For example, the English
defined themselves for colonial purposes as an elect people (gens) over
against the Irish considered as a ‘non-people’ (de-gens). And this strategy of separating pure from impure was subsequently employed with
regard to the subject races of overseas colonies in Africa, Asia and the
Americas. (SGM, 72)
England as ‘self ’ and Ireland as ‘other’ is, in this interpretation, the foundation
of all later forms of the colonial construction of the ‘other’ stemming from
British imperialism. In Inventing Ireland (1995),3 Declan Kiberd had made a
similar claim:
In centuries to come, English colonizers in India or Africa would impute
to the ‘Gunga Dins’ and ‘Fuzzi-Wuzzies’ those same traits already attributed to the Irish. The fact that the Irish, like the Indians, can on occasion
be extremely cold, polite and calculating was of no great moment, for
their official image before the world had been created and consolidated
by a far greater power. (II, 15)
Such constructions of England and Ireland as mutually defining ‘others’ have
been fundamental to the assertion of the ‘postcolonial’ significance of modern
Irish writing. If Ireland, historically, is the first modern nation to overthrow
colonial rule, then the Ireland-England opposition represents a defining
version of the opposition of ‘self-other’, ‘same-different’ within colonial and
postcolonial writing. This ‘universalising’ of the Ireland-England opposition
is then completed by being read through the lens of Freudian psychology,
so that the ways in which ‘the national We is defined over and against the
foreign Them’ (SGM, 65) produces a complex process of mutual exchange in
which, Kearney suggests, ‘we find creatures of our own repressed unconscious
returning to haunt us as phantom “doubles” – frères ennemis. The divided self
Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (London, 1995), hereafter cited in the text as II.
3
285
seeks to protect itself against its own inner division by projecting its “other
self ” onto someone other than itself ’ (SGM, 74). Similarly, Kiberd suggests
that ‘every great power evolved its own opposite in order to achieve itself ’
(II, 37–8), so that, ‘if England and Ireland had never existed, the Irish would
have been rather lonely. Each nation badly needed the other, for the purpose
of defining itself ’ (II, 2). What this implies, for Kiberd, is that ‘Ireland also
began to appear to English persons in the guise of their Unconscious’, so that
‘the effect of official policy was the creation of a secret England called Ireland ’
(II, 15). Ireland is both England’s ‘other’ and its ‘double’, a repressed sameness
masked by the assertion of difference. And the process of repression and
projection means that no one is closer to us than those from whom we claim
the greatest distance: ‘identity’, Kiberd suggests, ‘was dialogic; the other was
also the truest friend, since it was from that other that a sense of self was
derived’; thus it was that ‘Wilde loved England as genuinely as Goethe loved
the French’ (II, 48). England-Ireland is both a fundamental binary of opposites
and, at the same time, a comprehensive totality – ‘self ’ and ‘other’, ‘conscious’
and ‘unconscious’ – in which each both negates and completes the other.
It is an argument that has significant parallels with Jacques Derrida’s autobiographical meditation on otherness in Monolingualism of the Other (1996),4
in which he presents himself as both ‘other’ to French – an Algerian Jew who
had never visited France – and, at the same time, as a ‘self ’ constituted by
the French language; and yet also one for whom, paradoxically, it was metropolitan France which was ‘other’: ‘First and foremost, the monolingualism
of the other would be that sovereignty, that law originating from elsewhere,
certainly, but also primarily the very language of the Law’ (MO, 39). From
the perspective of the colonial Algerian, the Other is the French Law under
which he lives, and yet it is the French language which constitutes the ‘self ’
who is Derrida. Before beginning to speak about oneself, Derrida insists,
‘it is necessary to know already in what language I is expressed, and I am
expressed’ (MO, 28). For Derrida, whatever his ethnic or national origin, the
language of the self is French:
My attachment to the French language takes forms that I sometimes
consider ‘neurotic’. I feel lost outside the French language. The other
languages which, more or less clumsily, I read, decode or sometimes
speak, are languages I shall never inhabit . . . Not only am I lost, fallen,
Jacques Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other, or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans Patrick
Mensah (Stanford, Ca., 1998; 1996), hereafter cited in the text as MO.
4
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Cairns Craig
and condemned outside the French language, I have the feeling of honoring or serving all idioms, in a word, of writing the ‘most’ and the ‘best’
when I sharpen the resistance of my French, the secret ‘purity’ of my
French . . . its relentless resistance to translation. (MO, 56)
At the same time, of course, as always for Derrida, one can never be ‘at one’
with a language because language precedes its speaker, escapes a writer’s or
speaker’s control, and is always more than (any)one can manage: ‘I have only
one language and it is not mine; my “own” language is, for me, a language that
cannot be assimilated. My language, the only one I hear myself speak and agree
to speak, is the language of the other’ (MO, 25). The colonial subject who
is ‘other’ to the French becomes ‘self ’ in French but in doing so reveals that
French is always already other to itself, and its speakers inevitably ‘other’ to it:
French may be Derrida’s home, but we are all homeless in language.
From the perspective of postcolonial resistance to the imposed languages
of imperialism, one might expect such a deconstructive transformation of self
into otherness, otherness into self, to be the opening for a displacement of the
power of the language of the coloniser. But for Derrida the colonial experience
re-inscribes the difference – not to say the différance – that separates French
from other languages. Indeed, Derrida (however gently) mocks those AlgerianFrench writers who still claim to have a ‘mother’ tongue that is not French:
Abdelkebir Khatibi speaks of his ‘mother tongue’. It is certainly not
French, but he speaks about it. He speaks about it in another language.
In French, precisely. He makes this little secret public. He publishes his
words in our language. In order to say of his mother tongue that – and
that is a little personal secret! – it has ‘lost’ him. (MO, 35)
Derrida can claim no such ‘mother tongue’ because French, the language of
the ‘other’ rather than the mother (though it was, in fact, the language of his
mother), cannot perform for him the role of a lost origin, of a displaced innocence in which language and world are one. Those who indulge themselves
in the ‘bilingualism’ of writing in French about their lost mother tongue are
enacting not so much the defeat of the colonised by the hegemony of the coloniser (however painful that might be) but the metaphoric loss of a language in
which one can be ‘at home’. Such nostalgia is, of course, for Derrida an illusion:
there is no such language, and the (sentimental) bilingualism of the colonised simply encourages the false conception of a language which one might
287
‘inhabit’ as though one were truly ‘at home’ within it. The ‘monolingualism of
the other’ is the condition in which one is forced to confront the ultimate fact
that language itself, even a language which is one’s only habitation, will always
be a place in which one can never be at home. It is therefore the condition, one
might say, of Irish people who speak only English – a condition characteristic
of many of the most influential Irish writers in the twentieth century and the
driving force behind many of their most spectacular achievements.
By deconstructing the supposed opposition between (native) ‘mother
tongue’ and (learned) ‘written language’, and therefore the supposed superiority ascribed to the ‘hybrid’ in postcolonial theory, Derrida effectively
reinscribes the monolingualism of the French speaker/writer as superior to the
bilingualism of the colonised, because it is a condition which is not haunted
by a false sense of language’s ability to redeem one from otherness by cocooning oneself in ‘motherness’. The colonial from the margins for whom French
is the first and only language is redeemed from the falsehoods of believing in a
language of ‘origins’ while continuing to be able to make use of the power of
cultural tradition to which a language like French gives one access. Whatever
the ontological status of all languages in terms of their relationship to the ‘real’,
French remains the language of power, not only the colonial power to which
Derrida was subject in Algeria but the power of the cultural capital which that
colonial domination made possible. And Derrida has acquired that cultural
capital by assimilating himself to what, as an Algerian Jew, was ‘other’ to him
in his childhood: ‘one entered French literature only by losing one’s accent’
(MO, 45), he declares, and with all the insistence of a convert acknowledges, ‘I
cannot bear or admire anything other than pure French’ (MO, 46). However
‘other’ French might be, in other words, it is an ‘otherness’ which reinscribes
and retains a perfection – the purity of the medium – to which ‘other’ languages
cannot aspire, and it is the repository of a completeness (even in its necessary
incompleteness) which other languages are incapable of matching. However
‘other’ Derrida might have been to French, however ‘other’ French might be to
itself (as all languages are), nonetheless French remains central to culture-ingeneral in a way that other languages cannot be: Derrida is the inheritor of a
power which, if embraced, is able to turn other into self:
The obscure chance, my good fortune, a gift for which thanks should be
given to goodness knows what archaic power, is that it was always easier
for me to bless this destiny. Much easier, more often than not, and even
now, to bless than curse it. . . . Everything I do, especially when I am
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writing, resembles a game of blindman’s buff: the one who is writing,
always by hand, even when using machines, holds out his hand like a
blind man seeking to touch the one whom he could thank for the gift
of a language, for the very words in which he declares himself ready to
give thanks. (MO, 64)
A ‘mother tongue’ requires an act of translation between self and other, but for
Derrida, French self-other, his own writing has to be so French that it not only
resists translation into other languages but resists translation even into ‘another
such French’ (MO, 56). The power of powerlessness, the centrality of being
marginal: writing – writing as deconstruction – is only made possible by the
power of a French which can give access to the tradition of Western culture –
the canon by which our identity has been constructed – and, at the same time,
makes possible its deconstruction, its transformation into otherness. Within
French, in other words, self and other can endlessly change places in a series
of deconstructive inversions: like Kearney and Kiberd’s ‘Ireland-England’ they
form a union (no matter what the politics) in which each mimics the other,
in which ‘otherness’ is simply a projection of an unacknowledged version of
the self. Algeria-France and Ireland-England are binaries in which opposition turns out to be sameness, in which otherness turns out to be selfhood,
and – ironically – in which the superior power of the dominant language is
relentlessly reasserted no matter how often its works are subject to deconstruction, precisely because it makes that deconstruction possible.
It is for this reason – and against the grain of much Irish criticism – that
Kiberd’s hyphenated version of Ireland-England lays so much importance on
the role of the Anglo-Irish, both in Irish literature and in the construction
of modern Irish identity: if Ireland-England are mutually reflecting others,
then it is the Anglo-Irish who most richy fulfil in themselves and in their
writing the ‘othering’ by which the Irish self comes into existence. They,
more than any other, perform in their very personalities the Ireland-England
dialectic by which both countries are defined: ‘The project of inventing a
unitary Ireland is the attempt to achieve at a political level a reconciliation
of opposed qualities which must first be fused in the self ’ (II, 124). As with
Derrida, the colonial ‘other’ becomes, through being at one with the language
of the coloniser, the equal of, if not a projection of, the colonising self. Self
and other exchange places, and exchange cultures in an economy in which
apparent loss (otherness) becomes profit (a new assertion of selfhood), in
which apparent opposition (self-other) becomes unity (self-reflection). The
289
self-other opposition is transformed – ‘After a while, neither the colonizer
nor the colonized stood on their original ground, for both – like Prospero
and Caliban – had been deterritorialized ’ (II, 279) – and is revealed to be
fundamentally illusory: self and other, as in Derrida, turn out to be versions
of the same, allowing the colonised to acquire the powers of the coloniser
(pre-eminence in literature in English) without losing their identity as the
colonised.
It is by such an exchange that W. B.Yeats becomes, for Kiberd, the first truly
modern poet, because he is the first decolonising poet to accept his monolinguality within the imperial language. The consequence is that Yeats’s poetry
is a poetry without reference: it is directed at an object – Ireland – which does
not yet exist or, later, when it does exist, does not correspond to the Ireland
that Yeats wishes to address. The outcome is a writing that asserts its nationality through the refusal of past traditions, through the creation of a new style
which has no foundation either in the self or the nation:
Synge wrote as if he were Adam and this the first day of creation: so did
Whitman and so, at times, did Yeats. Their problem was that the worlds
which they created existed only as linguistic constructs and solely for
the duration of the text. Each artist had, strictly speaking, no subjective
self preceding the book as predicate; and so the text had no time other
than that of its enunciation. (II, 126)
The danger of such a style is that it might not be able to ‘reproduce itself in
the material world’ and ‘may become an end in itself ’ (II, 127): formal invention thus becomes a means to ‘celebrate the nation’s soul, while at the same
time insisting that it has yet to be made’ (II, 128). The nationalist poet of
the nation-yet-to-be-invented must work, therefore, with a language which
has no content: ‘it is possible to fake a nation into existence via a style’ (II,
308). Poetry (in English) that addresses the (Irish) nation as an ‘imagined
community’ which never, in the past or the future, can have the status of a
real referent, thereby prefigures Derrida’s ‘monolingualism of the other’: ‘The
monolingual of whom I speak speaks a language of which he is deprived. The
French language is not his. Because he is therefore deprived of all language,
. . . he is thrown into absolute translation, a translation without a pole of
reference’ (MO, 61). Yeats’s Irishness and his monolingualism, his composite
English-Irish self, his nationalism without a national referent, his traditionalism without a nation which shapes his tradition, makes language itself the
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object of his art, and thus transforms the marginal, nationalist poet into the
archetypal ‘modernist’ poet in whose work we can see a prefiguration of the
‘linguistic turn’ in modern thought that made deconstruction itself possible.
II
Yeats’s status as the first modern poet might be justified, on this account,
because his contentless style – resulting from the specific historical circumstance of his ‘monolingual otherness’ – confirms what came to be, in the very
years when Ireland as a nation was turning into a real referent, the basis of
the most influential account of the nature of poetry in the modern critical
tradition – C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards’s The Meaning of Meaning (1923).5
For Ogden and Richards poetry is language to which ‘reference’ is irrelevant:
poetic language and scientific language are as ‘other’ as Ireland and England
since, for poetry, ‘the truth or falsity’ of a statement ‘matters not at all’, for
‘provided that the attitude or feeling is evoked the most important function
of such language is fulfilled’ (MoM, 259). Since poetry represents ‘the emotive
use’ (MoM, 257) of language, we cannot test it by the referential procedures
of science; we can test it only by how it fits within the attitudes which structure our response to the world:
As science frees itself from the emotional outlook, and modern physics
is becoming something in connection with which attitudes seem rather
de trop, so poetry seems about to return to the condition of its greatness,
by abandoning the obsession of knowledge and symbolic truth. It is not
necessary to know what things are in order to take up fitting attitudes
towards them . . . (MoM, 271)
Ogden and Richards’s argument is one which has been regularly used to
justify Yeats’s work since the 1920s. From W. H. Auden’s famous elegy which
defended the poet from his politics – ‘For poetry makes nothing happen/ . . .
it survives/A way of happening, a mouth’6 – to deconstructive analyses of Yeats’s
poems which assume that there is ‘no outside to text’, Yeats’s ‘mythologies’,
C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of
Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism (London, 1923), hereafter cited
in the text as MoM.
6
W. H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems 1927 – 57 (London, 1966), 142.
5
291
his belief in magic and spiritualism, his encounters with ghosts, have been
condoned on the basis that they require no ‘truth content’, that they belong
to a different order of discourse from those which can be scientifically or
logically tested. Poetry is the expression – or the creation – of the self; science
its reference-bound other.
Yeats himself gave credence to the Ogden and Richards view when he suggested that the mythology presented in A Vision was designed primarily as
‘stylistic arrangements of experience comparable to the cubes in the drawings
of Wyndham Lewis’,7 but if one looks back to the science in which Yeats grew
up in the last quarter of the nineteenth century the opposition between Yeats’s
theories and scientific reality is not as great as this argument would suggest.
Take, for instance, what is often considered to be Yeats’s most ‘anti-modern’
statement, his essay on ‘Magic’, first published in 1900. In it, Yeats makes three
key assertions:
(1) That the borders of our mind are ever shifting and that many minds
can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind,
a single energy.
(2) That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are a part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself
(3) That this great mind and great memory can be evoked by symbols.8
The apparently arcane nature of such beliefs have led critics to see Yeats as
deliberately constructing theories in defiance of contemporary science, and
indeed Yeats dramatised himself as determinedly opposed to modern thought:
‘. . . if some philosophic idea interested me, I tried to trace it back to its
earliest use, believing that there must be a tradition of belief older than any
European Church, and founded upon the experience of the world before the
modern bias’.9 But the ideas proposed in ‘Magic’ are in fact very closely based
on theories that were at the forefront of late-nineteenth-century empirical psychology.
First, the notion of minds that ‘flow into one another’ can be traced in the
most important contribution by a British thinker to the development of the
discipline of ‘psychology’ – James Ward’s article on ‘Psychology’ in the ninth
W. B. Yeats, A Vision (London, 1962; 1925), 25.
W. B. Yeats, ‘Magic’, Essays and Instroductions (London, 1961), 28.
9
Yeats, ‘Hodos Chameliontos’, Autobiographies, 265.
7
8
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edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1871–88). Ward’s article is sometimes
claimed to initiate the discipline of psychology, and what is distinctive about it
(and which also reflects on contemporary philosophical dilemmas) is its effort
to find a way of combining the empirical approach of the British tradition (in
which everything in the psyche derives from sense experience) with the transcendental theories of German philosophy (for which everything derives from
the categories which shape how we experience the world). Ward’s response was
to treat the mind as a historical and evolutionary phenomenon, whose content
in its contemporary manifestation was produced neither from a Lockean tabula
rasa nor as the outcome of transcendental categories. In Heredity and Memory,
a lecture delivered in 1912, he argued that, ‘provided we look at the world from
what I would call a spiritualistic and not from the usual naturalistic standpoint,
psychology may shew us that the secret of heredity is to be found in the facts
of memory’.10 Memory, for Ward, was not merely personal: the workings the
‘law of habit’ – that is, the gradual mechanization of action by repetition until
it becomes a skill which needs no conscious reflection – makes possible ‘the
inheritance of the permanent achievements of one generation by the next’.11
Evolution works by transforming the acquired skills of one generation into
bodily and mental capacities that are passed on to succeeding generations. As
Ward explains it in his article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
What was experienced in the past has become instinct in the present.
The descendant has not consciousness of his ancestors’ failures when
performing by ‘an untaught ability’ what they slowly and painfully
found out. But if we are to attempt to follow the genesis of mind from
its earliest dawn it is the primary experience rather than the eventual
instinct that we have first of all to keep in view.12
Ward proposed that we should think of the whole of humanity as being like
a single Lockean individual: it began in a tabula rasa but gradually acquired
habits which became unconscious abilities. Kantians are, therefore, correct in
believing that the mind is structured by categories which have never been part
of the (modern) individual’s experience; they are wrong in thinking, however,
James Ward, Heredity and Memory, being the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture delivered at
Newnham College, 9 November 1912 (Cambridge, 1913), 6.
11
Ibid., 12.
12
James Ward, ‘Psychology’, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edition, Vol XX (Edinburgh,
1886), 44–5.
10
293
that these are universal and transcendental categories to which the human mind
is necessarily subject. Those categories are, rather, the historical and contingent
habits produced by memories which are passed on from one generation to
another. These psychological inheritances Ward called ‘engrams’13 – memories
written into the body and which had been laid down by the ‘sensational’ experiences of our distant ancestors. The ‘doctrine of the inheritance of acquired
characters’ is, Ward insists, ‘not only Aristotle’s and Lamarck’s, but Darwin’s
as well’,14 and Ward accuses evolutionary theorists of having neglected this
fact. This ‘psychological or mnemic theory of heredity’15 underpins the notion
of an ‘organic memory’16 inherent in the body. In this context, Yeats’s ‘Great
Memory’ is no myth: it is that evolutionary deposit which allows each of our
minds access to a much greater experience than our own limited lives can
accumulate; so, too, his symbols are ‘engrams’ and his ‘Anima Mundi’ the
storehouse of hereditary capabilities. Yeats’s use of ‘magic’, therefore, disguises
in an apparently anti-scientific formulation an account of the mind which is
largely consistent with the most advanced empirical psychology at the end of
the nineteenth century.
Secondly, critics have regularly pointed to Yeats’s rejection of the materialism
of Huxley and Tyndall – ‘I am very religious, and deprived by Huxley and Tyndall,
whom I detested, of the simple-minded religion of my childhood, I had made
a new religion, almost an infallible Church of poetic tradition’17 – as proof of
his rejection of contemporary science. Such an argument fails to take account,
however, of the fundamental debates going on within nineteenth-century
science. Huxley – ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ – may have adopted a thoroughgoing
materialism as the consequence of the Darwinian account of evolution but
the co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, had,
within seven years of the announcement of that theory, declared that natural
selection could not account for the higher faculties of human beings and that
these were produced by an alternative spiritual influence. Wallace’s theories in
effect paved the way for the kind of panpsychism that Madame Blavatsky was
Ward attributes the term ‘engram’ to ‘Professor R. Semon of Munich’ in Die Mneme
als erhaltendes Prinzip im Wechsel des organischen Gechehens (1908), though the notion of
‘organic memory’ he attributes to ‘Professor Ewald Hering in a lecture, Concerning
Memory as a general function of Organized Matter, delivered at Vienna in 1870’ (Heredity
and Memory, 27).
14
Ibid., 20.
15
Ibid, 42–3.
16
Ibid., 43.
17
W. B. Yeats, Autobiographies (London, 1955), 116.
13
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to popularise and that underpinned Yeats’s own experiments in spiritualism.
That this dualistic theory of humanity’s relationship to evolution was not
simply Wallace’s individual eccentricity is clear from the fact that Tyndall’s
materialism was equally opposed by William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin)
and Peter Guthrie Tait, co-authors of the ground-breaking Treatise on Natural
Philosophy (1867), which was designed to replace ‘Newton’s Principia of force
with a new Principia of energy and extrema’, exemplifying ‘the One Great
Law of Physical Science, known as the Conservation of Energy’.18 Thomson
and Tait believed this new physics of ‘energy’, including its prediction of the
universe ending in an entropic death, was consistent with scripture: ‘dark
indeed would be the prospects of the human race’, they wrote in a popularising
essay on ‘Energy’ ‘if unilluminated by that light which reveals “new heavens
and a new earth” ’.19
That this ‘energy’ was fundamentally spiritual, however, was to be the
argument of Tait’s The Unseen Universe,20 co-authored with another physicist,
Balfour Stewart: ‘energy’, they stated, ‘has as much claim to be regarded as an
objective reality as matter itself [for] while matter is always the same, though
it may be masked in various combinations, energy is constantly changing
the form in which it presents itself. The one is like the eternal, unchangeable
Fate or Necessitas of the ancients; the other is Proteus himself in the variety
and rapidity of its transformations’ (UU, 115). Agreeing with Wallace, they
believed that mind-energy indicated ‘that there exists now an invisible order of
things intimately connected with the present, and capable of acting energetically upon it – for, in truth, the energy of the present system is to be looked
upon as originally derived from the invisible universe, while the forces which
give rise to the transmutations of energy probably take their origin in the same
region’ (UU, 199). The consequence is a psychical universe running parallel to
the physical one:
Each thought we think is accompanied by certain molecular motions
and displacements in the brain, and parts of these, let us allow, are in
some way stored up in that organ, so as to produce what may be termed
our material or physical memory. Other parts of these motions are,
Quoted Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise, Energy and Empire: A biographical study of
Lord Kelvin (Cambridge, 1989), 352, 353.
19
Thomson and Tait, ‘Energy’, Good Words, 3 (1862), 606–7; cited Smith and Wise, 535.
20
P. G. Tait and Balfour Stewart, The Unseen Universe; or Physical Speculations on a Future State
(London, 1875), hereafter cited in the text as UU.
18
295
however, communicated to the invisible body, and are there stored up,
forming a memory which may be made us of when that body is free to
exercise its functions. (UU, 200)
From such a physics of energy could be derived a justification for the immortality of individual personality because, ‘thought conceived to affect the matter
of another universe simultaneously with this may explain a future state’ (UU,
199–200). These were the arguments not of mystical cranks but, as in case
of Wallace, of serious scientists. Yeats’s ‘spiritualism’ would, in the 1870s and
1880s, not have been ‘other’ to science but at one with some of science’s own
most radical speculations. If the ‘reference’ of such scientific theories have since
proved illusory – like ether – that does not mean that they were not intended
referentially, and the parallel between Yeats’s poetic reference to similar entities
would bring Yeats’s poetry – at least in its historical context – much closer to
science than the Ogden-Richards view would imply.
Thirdly, one of the consequences of this revision of Newtonian physics was
a re-envisaging of the nature of the atom by Tait’s most brilliant pupil, James
Clerk Maxwell: developing Kelvin’s theories on energy, Maxwell presented the
atom as a vortex of liquid energy and matter as the product of these vortices
spinning in opposite directions and generating electrical flows:
Clerk Maxwell’s diagrammatic
representation of the atom as vortex (left) and of the interaction
of atoms as intertwining vortices
generating energy (right)
Ezra Pound’s ‘vorticism’ of the 1910s gets its metaphorical energy from Clerk
Maxwell’s reconstruction of the universe’s energy as produced from these
vortices, and their structure is replicated in Yeats’s own theory of the ‘gyre’.
However individualistic Yeats’s theories may seem, they had in fact much in
common with contemporary scientific speculation.
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Whether the particular texts mentioned above had a direct effect on Yeats I
cannot say (though The Unseen Universe was one of the most successful books
published by Macmillan, who became Yeats’s publisher), but the conception
of the universe that they invoked did lie directly behind a text with which he
was deeply familiar – another Macmillan publication, J. G. Frazer’s The Golden
Bough (first published in 1890). Frazer had attended Thomson’s lectures at
Glasgow as an undergraduate, taking from them, ‘a conception of the physical
universe as regulated by exact and absolutely unvarying laws of nature expressible in mathematical formulas’, and that conception he declared to have been
‘a settled principle of my thought ever since’.21 It was then James Ward who
encouraged Frazer towards anthropology (Frazer was a classicist) and it was
Ward’s psychological theories which underpinned Frazer’s analysis of the primitive mind. A key element in Ward’s psychology was its incorporation of the
theory of the ‘association of ideas’, an account of the mind that had been given
renewed impetus as a result of the work of John Stuart Mill and Alexander Bain.
Their associationist explanation of the mind was to provide the basis of the new
and influential evolutionary psychology of Herbert Spencer. For Frazer, magic
could be explained scientifically as a product of the the association of ideas,
while the theory of psychological association gave Yeats an empirical basis for
the operation of spiritual powers: ‘All sounds, all colours, all forms,’ he declared
in 1900, ‘either because of their pre-ordained energies or because of long association, evoke indefinable and yet precise emotions, or, as I prefer to think, call
down among us certain disembodied powers, whose footsteps over our hearts
we call emotions’.22 Yeats and Frazer, coming from opposite directions, are both
engaged in translating magic into psychological association, association into
magic: ‘long association’ becomes for Yeats a ‘disembodied power’ while, for
Frazer, homeopathic and contagious magic are nothing else but ‘different misapplications of the association of ideas’.23
Yeats’s engagement with Frazer, and with the scientific contexts of The
Golden Bough, was not, however, simply an engagement with a science which
was far from poetry’s ‘other’, it was an engagement with the specifically Scottish
thought of the late nineteenth century, since The Golden Bough was one of the
most distinctive products of a group of Scottish thinkers24 which included John
Robert Ackerman, J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work (Cambridge, 1990; 1987), 14.
W. B. Yeats, ‘The Symbolism of Poetry’, Essays and Introductions, 156 – 7.
23
Frazer, Golden Bough (1922), 12.
24
For an account of this group, see my ‘Introduction’ to the Canongate Classics edition
of Frazer’s The Golden Bough (Edinburgh, 2004).
21
22
297
Ferguson McLennan, who introduced the notions of ‘totem’ and ‘taboo’ into
anthropological discussion; William Robertson Smith, who developed those
theories into an evolutionary account of Biblical religion and whose editorship
of the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica produced one of the intellectual landmarks of Victorian culture; as well as Clerk Maxwell, who was a
contributor to the Britannica. Maxwell worked closely with Thomson and Tait
and would resort to Robertson Smith for Arabic terms for new mathematical
formulae, while it was to Robertson Smith that Frazer dedicated the first edition of The Golden Bough. The ways in which Yeats’s thought shadows the work
of these thinkers confirms, I believe, what I have argued elsewhere:25 that far
from Ireland-England being ‘self ’ and ‘other’ in Yeats’s ‘Anglo-Irish’ project,
Scotland played a crucial role, representing ‘another other’, one that offered an
alternative way of envisaging both the Irish past and an Irish future. Scotland’s
status in Yeats’s conception is clear from his account of the Scottish writer with
whom he might seem to have the least in common – Thomas Carlyle:
When once a country has given perfect expression to itself in literature, has carried to maturity its literary tradition, its writers, no matter
what they write of, carry its influence about with them, just as Carlyle
remained a Scotsman when he wrote of German kings or French revolutionists, and Shakespeare an Elizabethan Englishman when he told of
Coriolanus or of Cressida. Englishmen and Scotsmen forget how much
they owe to mature traditions of all kinds – traditions of feeling, traditions of thought, traditions of expression – for they have never dreamed
of a life without these things. They write or paint or think or feel, and
believe they do so to please no taste but their own, while in reality they
obey rules and instincts which have been accumulating for centuries;
their wine of life has been mellowed in ancient cellars, and they see but
the ruby light in the glass.26
Carlyle, as much as Shakespeare, is for Yeats the inheritor of ‘traditions of
feeling, traditions of thought, traditions of expression’ which ‘have been accumulating for centuries’, and the fact of such an independent culture existing
‘National Literature and Cultural Capital in Scotland and Ireland’, Liam McIlvanney
and Ray Ryan (eds), Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society.
26
‘Irish National Literature, I: from Callanan to Carleton’, The Bookman, July 1895, in John
P. Frayne (ed.), Uncollected Prose by W.B. Yeats, 1, First Reviews and Articles 1886 – 1896
(London: 1970), 360.
25
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on England’s doorstep is what makes the Ireland he dreams of creating a real
possibility. In Scotland, Yeats identified another other to England, one whose
different ‘otherness’ interrupts the self-other binary of the England-Ireland to
which Kearney and Kiberd attempt to return Irish writing.
III
If there is indeed, for Yeats, the possibility of identifying ‘another other’ in a
Scotland which is differently antithetical to England, what does this imply about
the theories within which Kiberd and Kearney construct their Ireland-England
binary? It is notable that Scotland is not mentioned in the index of Kiberd’s
book: Walter Scott receives one passing reference as does a ‘Celtic’ David
Hume; Burns receives none and there is no mention of the Fiona MacLeod
with whom Yeats was initially besotted in the 1890s. Ireland-England, it would
appear, exhausts all possible relations, reducing even American developments
to mere imitations of the hyphenated totality in which ‘Irish experience seems
to anticipate that of the emerging nation-states of the so-called “Third World”’
(II, 4). Neither self nor other, Scotland becomes invisible even when Scottish
traditions are being lived – as in the poetry of the Ulster Weavers – on the island
of Ireland, and even when one of the political and intellectual heroes of Kiberd’s
narrative – James Connolly – was born and brought up in Scotland.27 Instead
of Derrida’s ‘monolingualism of the other’, Kiberd’s account is a ‘monoculism
of the other’ in which Ireland stands as representative of all others over against
whom the imperial centre is defined.
For Kearney, such binarism is inscribed in all accounts of otherness because
they derive from fundamental structures in the whole tradition of Western
thought: ‘ever since Western thought equated the Good with notions of
self-identity and sameness, the experience of evil has often been linked with
notions of exteriority. Almost invariably, otherness was considered in terms
of an estrangement of the pure unity of the soul’ (SGM, 65). If estrangement
of an original ‘pure unity’ means that the Other was once a portion of the
Self, it also means that the Other is necessarily as singular as the self-identity
Connolly’s Scottish origins are mentioned only indirectly: ‘Even more depressing was
the fact that an otherwise advanced thinker such as James Connolly did not develop a
generalized anti-racist or anti-imperialist philosophy. Immediate realities in Scotland
and Ireland were just too pressing’ (II, 259). The fact that Scotland is introduced only
in the context of failings in Connolly’s otherwise laudable ideology is significant, as is
the reference to the fraudulent tradition of kilt-wearing (II, 151).
27
299
from which it emerged. It is a partition of the world which is replicated in
that founding move of the modern Western tradition, the Cartesian cogito,
in which the world is divided between the ‘I think’ and everything else over
against which it is counterposed. As Kearney notes,
This definition of alterity in relation to sameness is revisited by the modern movement in phenomenology . . . In The Phenomenology of Spirit,
Hegel historicizes the problem in terms of the master-slave dialectic.
Here, he argues, the self only expresses itself as a sovereign subject in so
far as it struggles with, and is eventually recognized by, its Other (das
Andere). But it is Husserl who brings the phenomenological dialectic to
its logical conclusion in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation when he claims
that the other is never absolutely alien but is always and everywhere
recognized as other precisely as other-than-me, that is, by analogy and
appresentation. (SGM, 16)
It is an opposition that was to be reinforced in Sartre’s philosophy of the
nothingness of the self, since the self is an act of negation which ensures that
whatever the self is confronted with is simply not-self: ‘the Other is the one who
is not-oneself ’.28
For Kearney, this absolute opposition of ‘self ’ and ‘other’ is the ‘problematic’ which ‘informs . . . the entire metaphysical paradigm of self-and-other
running from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and the modern philosophy of
consciousness’ (SGM,16), and his own work represents an effort to find a
way through the ‘enigma of the other’ as presented in ‘religious anthropology
(Eliade, Girard, Lévi-Strauss) and psychoanalysis (Freud/Lacan/Kristeva), and
running on into deconstruction (Derrida/Lyotard/Caputo), phenomenology
(Husserl/Heidegger/Levinas) and hermeneutics (Gadamer/Greisch/Ricoeur)’
(SGM,11–12). Kearney believes that we can escape the oppositions that haunt
the Western tradition if we give primacy to the fact that ‘the human self has a
narrative identity based on the multiple stories it recounts and receives from
others’ (SGM, 231), and by foregrounding the fact that ‘we are narrative beings
because the shortest road from self to self is through the other’ (SGM, 231).
As a result, he insists, there are ‘certain narrative footbridges which may help
us negotiate both the dizzy peaks of alterity and the subterranean chasms of
abjection’ (SGM, 231) and thereby ‘make us more hospitable to strangers, gods
William Ralph Schroeder, Sartre and his Predecessors: The Self and the Other (London,
1984), 239.
28
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and monsters without succumbing to mystique or madness’ (SGM, 18). If
we start, however, on this particular ground, and within this particular tradition, the binary of the self-other opposition is always going to be waiting at
the other end of the bridge, whichever end one decides to make for – since, as
Derrida insists, every route ‘is repetition, return, reversibility, iterability, the
possible reiteration of the itinerary’ (MO, 58). The (anti-)metaphysics of the
self-other opposition as invoked by this tradition is so insistent and so wideranging that it makes Kearney’s project of being ‘able to critically discriminate
between different kinds of otherness’ (SGM, 67) almost impossible. However
much he may insist on the importance of finding a way ‘between the logos
of the One and the anti-logos of the Other’ in order to discover a ‘practice of
dialogue between self and other’ (SGM, 18), he finds it impossible to escape
from these extremes except by mere assertion: ‘It simply doesn’t have to be
like this. All or nothing’ (SGM, 187). There is no theoretical way out of the
same-other dialectic, only a refusal to submit to its consequences by asserting
that ‘the ultimate response (though by no means solution) offered by practical
understanding is to act against evil ’ because ‘action turns our understanding
towards the future in view of a task to be accomplished’ (SGM, 101), transferring ‘the aporia of evil from the sphere of theory (theoria) – proper to the exact
knowledge criteria of logic, science and speculative metaphysics – to the sphere
of a more practical art of understanding (techne/praxis)’ (SGM, 100–1).
Kearney’s choice of the so-called ‘continental’ tradition as both the ultimate expression of the (post)modern condition and the context for developing
his own theoretical position is, of course, itself part of a ‘binary’ which pits
the English language tradition of modern philosophy (the ‘Anglo-American’
tradition) against the ‘continental’ tradition: they are, in effect, philosophical ‘others’. And Kearney’s choice of where he locates himself, as an Irish
philosopher, just like Kiberd’s situating of his criticism within a postcolonial
framework, is the expression of a resistance to ‘English’ hegemony. Continental
theory and postcolonial criticism define philosophy and literature in Ireland
as not-England. But if, as I have suggested in relation to Yeats, Scotland might
represent for Ireland another other, then in the Scottish philosophical tradition
there might be also be another other, an alternative starting point for confronting Kearney’s dilemma of how ‘to acknowledge a difference between self and
other without separating them so schismatically that no relation at all is possible’ (SGM, 9). In his introduction, Kearney quotes approvingly the words
of Julia Kristeva, that today ‘the media propagate the death instinct’ and that
‘nationalisms, like fundamentalisms, are screens in front of this violence, fragile
301
screens, see-through screens, because they only displace that hatred, sending
it to the other’ (SGM, 8–9). The ‘death’ instinct, of course, is a fundamental
element of Freud’s later psychology, but it is one which which was the target
of an influential book – The Origins of Love and Hate 29 – published in 1935 by
Scottish psychologist Ian D. Suttie, in which he disputed Freud’s account of
the mind because it ‘postulates conflict, struggle and repression as inevitable
and indeed as the welder of society’ (OLH, 116).
The inadequacy of Freud’s theories, Suttie argued, derived from his insistence on ‘a primary, independent, instinct for destruction – a hatred stimulated
from within like hunger, and having no reference to external provocation or
purpose’ (OLH, 198), which results in a view of society as ‘absolutely broken
up into individuals each seeking its own ends exclusively’ (OLH, 239). Suttie
finds it difficult to believe that ‘any successful species can be born with useless
and even self-conflicting dispositions’ (OLH, 238) and proposes an alternative: ‘The important thing to remember, however, is that consciousness of self
as isolated from and independent of the rest of the world is probably associated with some measure, however trivial, of anxiety and resentment from the
very beginning, but on the other hand (in my view, as against Freud’s) it is
also associated with loving feelings towards others as well as with angry claims
upon them’ (OLH, 27). For Suttie, love is the foundation of identity because
he regards love ‘as social rather than sexual in its biological function, as derived
from the self-preservative instincts not the genital appetite’, so that sociability
is fundamental to the individual psyche – rather than ‘an aim inhibited sexuality’ – and culture, the defining context of human life, is ‘derived from love as a
supplementary mode of companionship (to love) and not as a cryptic form of
sexual gratification’ (OLH, 36). Where the tradition of Western thought has
begun from the self as thinker, to which the world is other, Suttie begins from
a situation in which ‘the bodily self acquires a value over and above its capacity
for yielding sensory satisfactions in so far as it is the object of the mother’s interest,
and the first plaything shared with her’ (OLH, 37). We begin, in other words, as
the ‘other’, and become a ‘self ’ through sharing: the ‘self ’ does not project ‘the
other’ from its own autonomous individuality, but learns its selfhood through
sharing its otherness. The failure of Freudian psychology lies in its ‘obstinate
determination to leave out of account social situations and hypothetical social
motives. They wish to account for the whole process of mental development in
Ian D. Suttie, The Origins of Love and Hate (London, 1935), hereafter cited in the text as
OLH. This is a tradition which has been analysed by Gavin Miller, see his R. D. Laing
(Edinburgh, 2004).
29
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terms of what goes on within the individual mind itself ’ (OLH, 40). Freudians
fail to acknowledge the fundamentally social nature from which individual
experience begins.
I consider that the germ of goodness or of love is in the individual
(of every species which has evolved a nurtured infancy) from the very
beginning, and that our traditional method of upbringing frustrates this
spontaneous benevolence and substitutes a ‘guilt-anxiety’ morality for
natural goodness. I consider further that the traditional attitude is so
deeply ingrained in Freud and Adler’s outlook on life that they cannot
admit the existence of love as other than a prudent avoidance of the
anger of others. (OLH, 52)
We do not begin in self-assertion: the baby ‘not only starts life with a
benevolent attitude, but the Need-to-Give continues as a dominant motive
throughout life’ (OLH, 53); our psychoses are not the product of the frustration of sexual instincts but of the frustration of our need to love, and
be loved, so that psychotherapy in practice is ‘nothing but the overcoming
of the barriers to loving and feeling oneself loved, and not as the removal of
fear-imposed inhibitions to the expression of innate, anti-social, egoistic and
sensual desires’ (OLH, 53–4).30
Suttie was one of several Scottish psychologists who challenged Freudian
theory, a challenge climaxing in the 1960s and 70s in the anti-psychiatry
of R. D. Laing. Laing’s most famous book was The Divided Self, 31 a phrase
invoked in Kearney’s discussion of Julia Kristeva: ‘the stranger is neither a race
nor a nation . . . we are our own strangers – we are divided selves’ (SGM, 76).
For Kristeva, the ‘divided self ’ ‘expresses the universal experience of a deep
unconscious malaise with “others” arising from our repressed rapport with the
internally housed “primal scene” that informs our psyche’ (SGM, 76). That
‘primal scene’ – Freud’s account of the original killing of the father by his
sons as the origin of the Oedipus complex – is for the Scottish tradition a fiction, the outcome of Freud’s refusal to engage with human beings as social,
and, therefore, as caring beings: as Suttie summarises it, Freudian psychology
This had been the anti-darwinian argument of Patrick Geddes’ and J. Arthur Thomson’s
book on Evolution (London, 1911), which argued that the success of human beings as
evolutionary creatures was their capacity for co-operation based on love.
31
R. D. Laing, The Divided Self (Harmondsworth, 1990; 1959), hereafter cited in the ext
as DS.
30
303
‘ignores the mother for the father’, ‘denies tenderness – filial and parental – and
universalises sex’, ‘interprets socialization in man as merely the overcoming of
sex jealousy by coercion and fear’, ‘regards hate as spontaneous, ineradicable
appetite and all motive as egoistic’ (OLH, 235). By putting the mother back
into the story of the psyche the primal scene is transformed from one of violence and destruction to one of love and mutuality. Kearney’s discussion is
focused on ‘Strangers, Gods and Monsters’, because these are terrifying versions
of an Other from which one is estranged, but for Suttie the real monsters are
the creations of modern psychology – ‘these “mythical monsters”, independent
individuals’ (OLH, 112), who can be believed to exist only in the conceptions
of theorists who ignore that human life is characterised from its beginning by
dependency on one another. As the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray put
it32 in developing Suttie’s ideas, ‘the most obvious fact about the human infant
is [its] total helplessness’ (PR, 47): it ‘is, in fact, “adapted” to being unadapted,
“adapted” to complete dependence on an adult human being’ (48). The primal
scene is that a human child ‘is made to be cared for . . . born into a love-relationship which is inherently personal’ (PR, 48). As a consequence the Other is,
for Macmurray, the very antithesis of the alien and the monstrous:
We have seen that the form of the child’s experience is dependence on
a personal Other; and that this form of experience is never outgrown,
but provides the ground plan of all personal experience, which is constituted from start to finish by relation to the Other and communication
with the Other. (PR, 154)
The self, for Macmurray, is not the isolated ego of Cartesian or Sartrean tradition: the self is a person in relation with others. Neither is the self the narrative
self that Kearney invokes: the self is an agent and it is precisely through its
agency in the world that it is in contact with the other:
in acting I am not ‘over against’ an object, but in contact with the
Other. In acting I meet the Other, as support and resistance to my
action, and in this meeting lies my existence. Consequently, I am aware
of the Other, and of myself as dependent upon and limited by the
John Macmurray, Persons in Relation (London, 1961), hereafter cited in the text as PR.
This forms Volume II of The Form of the Personal, based on Gifford lectures given at
the University of Glasgow in 1953 – 4. Volume I, The Self as Agent was published in
1957. Macmurray acknowledge’s Suttie’s work, PR, 45.
32
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Other. This awareness is knowledge, for it is awareness of the existence
of the Other and of my own existence in dynamic relation with the
Other. (PR, 209)
Starting from the self-reflective ‘I’, the thinking self, the Western tradition has
projected the ‘Other’ as unknowable and therefore alien, and in so doing has
created the Other as monstrous: Suttie, Macmurray and Laing, on the other
hand, start from the ‘I and you’ as the fundamental structure of experience. As
Laing puts it in attacking traditional Freudian psychology:
Instead of the original bond of I and You, we take a single man in isolation and conceptualize his various aspects into ‘the ego’, ‘the superego’,
and ‘the id’. The other becomes either an internal or external object or
fusion of both. How can we speak in any way adequately of the relationship between me and you in terms of interaction of one mental
apparatus with another? (DS, 19)
‘The science of persons’, Laing argues, ‘is the study of human beings that begins
from a relationship with the other as person and proceeds to an account of the
other still as person’ (DS, 21). The phrase ‘divided self ’, which Laing took from
Macmurray, has a very different significance in this context than in Kristeva’s
(or Kearney’s) usage: it is the self which seeks autonomy and independence
that is sick; the healthy self knows both its dependence on the other and the
necessary inner division that comes from being, in part, a part of the other: ‘It
is out of the earliest loving bonds with the mother that the infant develops the
beginnings of being-for-itself. It is in and through these bonds that the mother
“mediates” the world to the infant in the first place’ (DS, 190). The individual
self, as a product of (m)othering, always remains dependent on the other and,
in developing, on many another, thereby beginning to answer Kearney’s quandary about how we can avoid treating ‘the other as so exterior or estranged that
it becomes utterly alien’.
IV
For Richard Kearney, the problem with which the philosophical tradition
leaves us is that of the passage between ‘speculative theory’ and the need to
‘act against evil’ (SGM, 101), and the fact that ‘speculative theory’ gives us no
305
basis for that action. In the end, Kearney offers us as a middle way the possibility that we can ‘muddle through’ with ‘a certain judicious mix of phronetic
understanding, narrative imagination and hermeneutic’ (SGM, 187). From
the perspective of the Scottish tradition that I have been outlining, however,
Kearney’s dilemma is unresolvable precisely because it begins from the priority
of ‘speculative theory’. For John Macmurray, on the other hand, ‘the Self exists
only as an Agent’ and, therefore, ‘the Self exists only in dynamic relation with
the Other’ (PR, 17). If ‘speculative theory’ is a consequence of action rather
than its foundation, if engagement with the other has priority over the effort to
recognise the other, then it may be possible to construct an alternative ‘middle
way’ which is not simply a ‘muddle way’.
In this sense, the Scottish traditions outlined above33 do not constitute
merely an alternative to or a supplement to the Ireland-England binary – or,
indeed, to the opposition between Anglo-American and Continental philosophy – but a critique of the very bases on which the self-other dialectic has been
constructed within those traditions. The practical task of how we can encounter and deal ethically with the Other, of how we can resist reducing the Other
to the irredeemably alien, is given philosophical and psychological grounding
by challenging the fundamental isolation of the self-as-thinker from which the
Cartesian tradition begins. The argument of this Scottish tradition is that we do
not encounter the world as alien and subsequently try to find a way of relating
to it: ‘the personal conception of the world’, as Macmurray puts it, ‘is not the
result of personifying what is first recognized as non-personal’ (PR, 221). We
begin as other-related creatures and thus ‘the personal conception of the Other
is original’ (PR, 221), in the sense that it has an existential and logical priority
over all other forms of understanding. Since ‘the Self is constituted by its relation to the Other’ (PR, 17) there can be no isolated ‘ego’ to which the Other is
inherently alien: it is only through the Other that the Self exists, and the most
important component of the Other is ‘other persons’: ‘Persons, therefore, are
constituted by their mutual relation to one another’ (PR, 24). Otherness in the
personal world is, in other words, always plural: if it is the case that ‘“I” exist
as only one element in a complex “You and I” ’, the ‘you’ in that ‘you and I’ is
not ‘you’ as in the ‘I-Thou’ of Buber’s version of our relation with God. That
can only ever be an adress to one unique individual, whereas the ‘I-You’ of the
infant’s relationship with the mother is an opening out on to a multiplicity
For an account of how this tradition developed from previous Scottish philosophy,
see my ‘Beyond Reason: Hume, Seth, Macmurray and Scotland’s Postmodernity’ in
Eleanor Bell and Gavin Miller (eds), Scotland in Theory (Amsterdam, 2004).
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of ‘I-you’ relationships: ‘I exist as an individual only in a personal relatrion to
other individuals’ (PR, 28). The binary of Self and Other is a linguistic illusion:
in the real world there are only ‘selves and others’, selves whose very being and
identity as selves is defined in their relations with multiple others.
Three things follow from this in relation to the issues explored in this paper.
First, the world as revealed by science from which the young Yeats recoiled,
may be threatening and disturbing but it is not the antithesis of our orindary
human experience: science is a subtraction from the world of the personal, a
deliberate reduction of the world of the personal by the elimination of what is
defining of persons – their intentions. For science the world is a place in which
‘everything in it happens ; nothing is ever done; and none of its constituent elements is capable of reflection’ (PR, 219). Science treats the world as though it
were without intentions but can do so only on the basis of the unacknowledged
intention of the scientist. From this perspective, we can see in Yeats’s grappling
with the science of his time (as, indeed, in the speculative work of scientists
like Tait and Stewart) an effort to bring the scientific and the personal back
into relation, and by resisting the reduction of the personal to the scientific to
give the personal again priority in our encounter with the Other.
Secondly, the historical perspectives opened up by the anthropological theories that lie behind The Golden Bough provide an alternative to the Freudian
account of why human beings are as they are. In this version, Strangers, Gods
and Monsters are not symbols of the threat of the unreachably alien but of the
potential of love to regain the relationship with the other on which all selfhood was originally based. It is a perspective whose evolutionary significance
had already been explored in the theories of ‘totem and taboo’ developed by
J. F. MacLennan and Robertson Smith, which emphasised how different were
the value systems of societies which were matriarchal rather than patriarchal.
The flaw in Freud’s account of the mind, in Suttie’s view, comes from the fact
that he is insufficiently historical – or anthropological – in his understanding of the psyche; he accepts the structures of his own culture as universal
and ‘dismisses the great and mysterious Mother-cults of antiquity’ (OLH,
137). In so doing he loses sight of the real evolutionary impetus of human
communities and, unlike those ‘Mother-cults’, is ‘unwilling to admit the existence of any positive, primary, “other-regarding” feeling’(OLH, 116). In the
Freudian animus against ‘other-regarding’ feeling we can descry, perhaps, ‘a
puritan intolerance of tenderness’ (OLH, 96) which resists recognition of our
indebtedness to the other – an attitude all too familiar in many areas of our
nation-based cultural studies.
307
Thirdly, if we think of our national ‘self ’ as being like our individual self,
then we can think of it as defined not by its confrontation with a hostile Other
(even if some others are hostile), or determined by an exclusive Self-Other
binary (even if a particular other weighs heavily on us), but as constituted by
the (many) crossing points of our other-relatedness. Adding Ireland-Scotland
to Ireland-England (and, indeed, Scotland-England) then provides us with
‘another other’ that can release us not only from the repressions of past history,
but from some of the repressions and distortions of modern theory. We might
then take as an emblem of the aim and purpose of Irish-Scottish studies Suttie’s
account of the difference between Celtic Christianity and its mainstream alternatives:
Pelagius, who resisted the Augustinian doctrine of eternal damnation of
unbaptized infants, was an Irish monk. Duns Scotus, who later upheld
similar views, was, as his name indicates, a Scotsman. The spread of
Christianity in these regions and early times was by persuasion (i.e.
mission work) rather than by conquest and coercive ‘conversion’. The
tolerance of this strain of Christianity was further indicated by their
treatment of pagan myth and festivals – new saints borrowing the harmless celebration (and sometimes even the names) of the old deities (OLH,
153).
As Macmurray puts it, ‘the fear of the Other is, at bottom, the fear of life’ (PR,
165) – and if we are to do justice to the nature of our cultures as living and
creative environments, we have to accept how dependent they are on otherness, and accept that their identity develops not by resistance to or withdrawal
from otherness but precisely from the complexity of their relatedness to many
others. We have to cease constructing them as binary engagements of Self and
Other and accept that that their identity depends always on Another Other.
Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies
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from Medieval to Modernity

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